Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTES: Port of New Bedford gets $50,000 from Vineyard Wind

November 26, 2019 — The New Bedford Port Authority has received $50,000 from Vineyard Wind to help ready the port for offshore wind.

Port officials have heard that an additional 50 vessels could be coming in and out of the harbor each day during construction of the wind farm, according to Edward Anthes-Washburn, Port Authority executive director. He said the port will use the money to help identify ways to accommodate more boats, determine what new infrastructure might be needed, and figure out how the port can leverage its existing infrastructure to take advantage of the opportunity.

“We appreciate the partnership with Vineyard Wind,” he said in an interview.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times 

Many fishermen aren’t on board with wind industry’s new plan

November 20, 2019 — The fierce competitors in the local offshore wind industry probably hoped to make a big splash with this news: They teamed up to propose a grid that creates uniform spacing between each tower and a similar orientation for the various wind farm proposals south of Martha’s Vineyard.

One of the chief goals was to assuage concerns among fishermen who worry that an uncoordinated array of hundreds of towers would make the waters hard to navigate — effectively displacing them from rich fishing grounds.

However, plenty of fishermen aren’t taking the bait. For many of them, the one nautical mile distance proposed between each giant turbine tower simply isn’t enough — especially for boats that are dragging big nets behind them.

Persuading fishermen to toe the line could be crucial to the nascent industry’s survival. Construction was about to begin on what would have been the first major offshore wind farm in the US until Interior Secretary David Bernhardt dragged out the permitting in August. Bernhardt ostensibly wants a study of the cumulative impact from all the wind farms in the pipeline, before allowing the first one to proceed.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

New England fishing groups object to latest offshore wind layout proposal

November 19, 2019 — Groups representing New England fisheries are objecting to a recently released proposal regarding the future spacing of offshore wind turbines.

Five companies that hold leases for offshore wind projects in New England – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Ørsted/Eversource, and Vineyard Wind – released a joint statement calling for a uniform layout of the wind turbines. The companies are calling for a 1 nautical mile spacing, arranged in east-west rows and north-south columns.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US fisheries rebuff offshore wind’s project layout rethink

November 19, 2019 — The five developers advancing offshore wind farms off the northeast US – Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind – have put forward a proposal to the country’s US Coast Guard (USCG) to use a uniform turbine layout for the projects, in a bid to defuse ongoing objections from the regional fishery industries.

The New England Offshore Wind Leaseholders (NEOWL), advancing more than 7GW between them, said the layout would have rows of turbines spaced one nautical mile apart, and align to the USCG’s requirement for “robust navigational safety and search and rescue capability by providing hundreds of transit corridors to accommodate the region’s vessel traffic”.

“This uniform layout is consistent with the requests of the region’s fisheries industry and other maritime users,” said the NEOWL in a joint statement. The proposed layout specifies that turbines will be spaced one nautical mile apart, arranged in east-west rows and north-south columns, with the rows and columns continuous across all New England lease areas.

Read the full story at ReCharge News

Top climate hawk bashes first big offshore wind project

November 15, 2019 — For the past seven years, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has given a weekly address about the dangers of climate change. Increasingly, some greens wonder if he is full of hot air.

The Rhode Island Democrat, one of the Senate’s top climate hawks, has emerged as a leading critic of Vineyard Wind, an 84-turbine offshore wind project proposed in federal waters 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Whitehouse has questioned the federal government’s review of the project, the first large-scale development of its kind in the United States, and criticized Vineyard Wind for failing to adequately consult fishermen.

His barbs have raised eyebrows in climate circles and in Massachusetts, where Vineyard Wind has the enthusiastic backing of the state’s political establishment, and comes as the Trump administration weighs the future of the project.

In August, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt called for an additional round of environmental review of the project (Climatewire, Aug. 12). A division of Interior, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, is currently conducting a cumulative impact study of other offshore wind projects proposed for the area.

In an interview, Whitehouse said he was simply pushing for improvements to BOEM’s permitting process to better accommodate the concerns of fishermen and other ocean users.

He argued that Vineyard Wind had already settled on the design of its project with investors before taking input from fishermen. And he cited the Block Island wind farm, a five-turbine project built by Rhode Island-based Deepwater Wind, as an example of how wind developers should approach fishermen’s concerns.

Keating said he appreciates the difficulty Whitehouse faces in balancing the concerns of fishermen next to the economic potential of offshore wind. He represents New Bedford, Mass., America’s largest commercial fishing port, and has heard similar concerns about offshore wind from some constituents. But he added: “I really feel an urgency and I feel an imperative that we have to go forward on this. This is gonna be great for our economy.”

Read the full story at E&E News

SARAH E. HUNT & CHARLES HERNICK: Trump’s Environmental Legacy Could Be the Rise of U.S. Offshore Wind

November 8, 2019 — The appetite for renewable energy is growing and the East Coast is a top target for companies looking to invest in wind energy. Sarah E. Hunt, with the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy, and Charles Hernick, with Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, explain how wind could end up being President Trump’s environmental legacy if the administration stays true to its all-of-the-above approach to energy.

When President Donald Trump took office, he pledged to make America a powerhouse by embracing an all-of-the-above approach to energy. While the president has criticized wind energy, ironically, it may be his administration that green-lights Vineyard Wind and substantially unlocks America’s offshore wind potential.

While dozens of offshore wind projects have been developed over the past two decades from the U.K. to China, only one project has come online stateside. That is about to change.

The U.S. East Coast is a top target for energy companies interested in investing in offshore wind and will bring with development a substantial boon for workers and the economy while also accessing a previously untapped source of emission-free energy.

Read the full opinion piece at Bloomberg

Vineyard Wind Appoints Fisheries Liaison For CT

October 29, 2019 — Offshore wind developer Vineyard Wind has appointed Caela Howard its fisheries liaison for Connecticut.

Howard has spent the last decade working closely with fisheries in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and in this role, she will serve as the primary point of contact for fishing industry representatives in Connecticut. She will report to the company’s lead fisheries liaison, Crista Bank.

“Vineyard Wind is excited to welcome Caela Howard as our first Connecticut fisheries liaison,” states Lars Pedersen, CEO of Vineyard Wind. “Caela brings extensive experience working closely with fishermen across southern New England, and we look forward to the insight she will provide as we continue building strong relationships with fishing communities throughout the region.”

Read the full story at North American Wind Power

Two Months Later, Vineyard Wind’s Delay Still Clouds US Offshore Picture

October 24, 2019 — Two months after the U.S. government abruptly delayed Vineyard Wind’s 800-megawatt offshore wind project, the industry is still looking for answers.

It’s not exactly clear when Vineyard will get its final go-ahead, let alone what effect the government’s unexpected “cumulative impacts analysis” will have on the pathbreaking $2.8 billion project or the broader American offshore wind market.

If anything, the timeline for a resolution has slipped. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management initially said it anticipated completing Vineyard’s supplemental environmental impact statement (EIS) in late 2019 or early 2020, delaying the project by about six months. But BOEM Acting Director Walter Cruickshank said this week that the Interior Department agency now expects to have the supplemental draft EIS “out for public comment early next year.”

Read the full story at Green Tech Media

MASSACHUSETTS: Edgartown, Vineyard Wind Settle Undersea Cable Dispute

October 2, 2019 — Vineyard Wind and the Edgartown conservation commission have comes to terms in a dispute over the construction of two heavy-duty underwater cables, as the nation’s first industrial-scale offshore wind farm moves through an extensive permitting and construction process.

A settlement signed off on by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) this week will allow the conservation commission to play an active role in closely monitoring the project to run an undersea cable from the offshore wind farm past the eastern shore of Chappaquiddick on its way to mainland Cape Cod.

Although the settlement clears one of the last of a long line of local and state permitting hurdles for the massive, 84-turbine ocean infrastructure project, a construction start date remains stalled until at least early 2020 because of delays at the federal level.

In 2018, Vineyard Wind submitted a notice of intent to install two, 220 kiliVolt undersea cables that would connect turbines on its wind-lease area 14 miles south of the Vineyard to mainland Massachusetts, with a landing point in Barnstable on Cape Cod. Because the proposed cables would run approximately one mile off the Chappaquiddick’s eastern shore through Muskeget Channel, it partly fell under the jurisdiction of the Edgartown conservation commission by order of the state Wetlands Protection Act.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette