June 4, 2021 — Rhode Island coastal regulators have given a proposed wind farm off the state’s coast critical approval over the objections of the fishing industry and some environmentalists.
The vote Wednesday by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council in favor of the South Fork Wind Farm moves the project one step closer to reality.
June 4, 2021 — Cooperative surveys by scientists and fishermen have laid groundwork for the first baseline study of how offshore wind turbine construction will affect southern New England fisheries, and organizers are seeking more advice for fine-tuning the effort.
“We’re really designing this on the fly,” said Steve Cadrin, a professor at the University of Massachusetts School for Marine Science and Technology, during a virtual meeting Thursday with fishermen and scientist advisors. “We’re wide open on how we can do this better.”
With offshore wind development plans surging ahead under the Biden administration, there’s a scramble in the marine sciences to understand how the potential construction of hundreds of turbines off the U.S. East Coast could change regional ocean environments and fisheries.
“Getting a baseline (study) is a real challenge” given the speed of recent developments, and the UMass-Vineyard Wind project is drawing on decades of fisheries survey work in Northeast waters, said Cadrin.
Based on eight surveys since 2019, researchers have determined that protocols used in the Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (NEAMAP), an integrated, cooperative state and federal data collection program, will be sensitive enough to “detect a moderate change for most important commercial species” such as whiting, longfin squid and summer flounder when the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project is constructed, said Cadrin.
June 3, 2021 — New Hampshire colleges, trade workers and policy makers have high hopes for job growth in the Northeast’s burgeoning offshore wind industry, even if we’re still years away from wind projects in the Gulf of Maine.
That was a major focus of a roundtable on wind industry development at the Port of New Hampshire in Portsmouth Tuesday, with Congressman Chris Pappas, the League of Conservation Voters and members of New Hampshire’s offshore wind commission.
Pappas, a Democrat, sits on the House Infrastructure committee and said he hopes to see an intersection between President Biden’s $2-trillion-dollar infrastructure proposal and his goal of permitting 30 gigawatts of U.S. offshore wind by 2030, as part of his climate change plans.
“While we do need to be talking about our roads and bridges, the conversation can’t stop there,” Pappas said. “It’s got to involve our port infrastructure … and we need to be thinking about the kind of renewable energy development that people here are hungry for. And we’ve got a solution that is just off our coastline.”
June 3, 2021 — The developers of the South Fork Wind Farm said they have reduced the number of turbines they plan to connect to the South Fork from 15 to 12 — though the amount of power sent ashore in East Hampton will remain the same.
The shift is a product of the availability of much larger turbines than when the project was originally proposed. An Ørsted spokesperson said that the company has settled on using 11 megawatt turbines for the project, which allows the total number of turbines to be reduced from 15 to 12 while still meeting the 132-megawatt planned power supply that the company has agreed to with the Long Island Power Authority.
The turbines used in the Block Island Wind Farm, and visible from the shores of Montauk on clear days, are rated at 6 megawatts. They tower to about 590 feet above the surface of the sea, while the current 11-megawatt Siemens turbines reach nearly 800 feet and a turbine being produced by GE that will also top the 11 megawatt nameplate tower soars to more than 850 feet.
But it also comes amid the public review process of the project by the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council. Analysts and fishing groups from around New England and New York have objected to the company placing the turbines in ecologically sensitive areas close to Cox Ledge — an undersea ridge of rocky bottom that is an important fishing area for Montauk and Rhode Island fishermen and a critical nursery for bottom dwelling fish species like the beleaguered Atlantic cod.
June 2, 2021 — A Dominion Energy Inc. ship being built to install offshore wind farms will be the first to comply with a U.S. domestic transport mandate, with the power company expecting the vessel to play a vital role in the nation’s clean-energy plans.
The ship is expected to be sea-ready by late 2023 and will adhere to the Jones Act, a century-old law that goods transported between U.S. ports be carried on domestically built and crewed ships. Ørsted and Eversource will charter the $500 million vessel to build two offshore wind farms that will power nearly a million homes in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York, according to a statement on Tuesday.
The companies expect it to help expedite installation of wind farms in U.S. waters, which would advance President Biden’s goal for 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. Without a Jones Act-compliant vessel, installing an offshore wind farm requires staging the materials in Canada or using feeder ships that bring the materials out to the installation vessel, said Dominion spokesman Jeremy Slayton. Both methods are slower and more expensive.
June 1, 2021 — For almost a half century, Angela Sanfilippo has spearheaded campaigns to protect the physical and economic health of commercial fishermen, their families and the communities in which they live.
The longtime president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association waged battle with energy behemoths while opposing two live natural gas pipeline terminals within about a dozen miles of Gloucester’s shores.
She fought foreign encroachment into U.S. fishing grounds and wrestled with fishing regulators over onerous fishery management regulations that have shrunk access to the rich fishing grounds that surround Cape Ann.
Now Sanfilippo is saddling up one more time to try to prevent the inexorable march of offshore wind projects in Massachusetts waters from blowing away elements of the Bay State’s historic and productive fishing industry.
“We are not crazy enough to think we’re going to stop this massive thing now,” Sanfilippo said at the beginning of an extended interview following the federal government’s final approval on May 10 of the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project, located south of Martha’s Vineyard. “But we want to be at the table.”
June 1, 2021 — In 2017, offshore wind generation appeared to be a dead issue in Maine. The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) had just completed an extensive study that deemed it too expensive for ratepayers. Now it is moving again at the speed of light.
In 2019, eighty percent of Maine’s electricity generation came from renewable energy sources. Maine leads New England in wind power generation. We rank sixth in the nation and wind provides 24 percent of our net generation. I point this out to say that Maine is a leader. I see many people advocating offshore wind development portraying Maine as being in the back of the pack on renewables, which is far from the truth.
What I would like to know is, why haven’t we started an independent study on the environmental impacts of offshore wind development? We have been told that we need to move quickly given the Governor’s ambitious goals. I have heard this repeatedly and from many people in the Legislature, the bureaucracy, special interest groups and from high-paid lobbyists working for foreign corporations. Where did these goals come from, and why are we using these goals as a target?
June 1, 2021 — Developers of a planned offshore wind farm to power the South Fork have agreed to reduce the number of turbines for the LIPA-contracted project to 12 from 15, but Rhode Island fishermen offered a $12 million compensation package say the turbine reduction won’t help and the package is inadequate.
Orsted and Eversource, partners on the $2 billion-plus project set to be built off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts by 2023, disclosed the change last week before a Rhode Island coastal commission that is considering whether to issue a permit for the project.
In a statement, the companies said they will “move forward with the reduction of the project’s total turbines from 15 to 12,” while offering a compensation package for Rhode Island fishermen. The $12 million, if accepted, would cover lost earnings, among other things, for those kept from fishing either by construction or placement of the turbines themselves.
June 1, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA:
From the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean and in communities from coast to coast, NOAA’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 budget request delivers the science, data, and services Americans need to address the climate crisis.
“This historic increase in NOAA’s budget will put American businesses, workers, and communities in a better position to respond to the climate crisis,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo. “Our economic competitiveness relies on our communities’ resilience and our ability to make informed decisions, especially when it comes to climate change and extreme weather. For decades, NOAA has provided critical weather and climate guidance that supports our economy, infrastructure, and security, and this historic investment will enable NOAA to deliver on its mission.”
For FY 2022, NOAA proposes a budget of $7.0 billion in discretionary appropriations, an increase of $1.5 billion from its enacted FY 2021 budget. NOAA provides 24×7 actionable information about climate change through a complex suite of oceanic, atmospheric, and space-based observing tools, using ships, planes, satellites and autonomous aerial and undersea vehicles. This budget increase will accelerate NOAA’s efforts to research, adapt to, and mitigate the impacts of climate change, in support of the Administration’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis at home and abroad, through $855.1 million in targeted investments in the following areas:
Communities across the country are struggling with the effects of extreme events like hurricanes, floods, droughts, wildfires, and fisheries collapse. In 2020, a record-setting 22 weather and climate disasters each caused over $1 billion in damage in the United States, including the worst wildfires in California history and several major hurricanes in a season that saw a record 30 named storms. With 2021 bringing massive, unprecedented winter storms to several southern states and predictions for another above-average hurricane season, investments in climate research to understand extreme events and provide services to help communities and businesses make smart climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation decisions are more important than ever.
“NOAA is the nation’s 24×7 provider of trusted and life-saving environmental information. From your daily weather forecast to decades of climate monitoring, NOAA is always on call,” said Ben Friedman, acting NOAA Administrator. “NOAA’s focus on equity inside and outside the agency positions us well to increase our support for vulnerable communities, and ensure that we are helping all Americans better prepare for and respond to the increasing impacts of climate change and extreme weather.”
The FY 2022 budget also strengthens investments in NOAA’s vessels, aircraft, and satellites — the observational platforms vital for measuring and monitoring our environment — as well as space weather observation and prediction services that protect critical infrastructure such as the electrical grid, aviation, and satellite communications:
May 28, 2021 — When U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration approved the country’s first major offshore wind farm this month, it billed the move as the start of a new clean energy industry that by the end of the decade will create over 75,000 U.S. jobs.
Industry executives and analysts do not contest that claim, but they make a clarification: For the first several years at least, most of the manufacturing jobs stemming from the U.S. offshore wind industry will be in Europe.
Offshore wind project developers plan to ship massive blades, towers and other components for at least the initial wave of U.S. projects from factories in France, Spain and elsewhere before potentially opening up manufacturing plants on U.S. shores, according to Reuters interviews with executives from three of the world’s leading wind turbine makers.
That is because suppliers need to see a deep pipeline of approved U.S. projects, along with a clear set of regulatory incentives like federal and state tax breaks, before committing to siting and building new American factories, they say – a process that could take years.
“For the first projects, it’s probably necessary” to ship across the Atlantic, said Martin Gerhardt, head of offshore wind product management at Siemens Gamesa, the global offshore wind market leader in a comment typical of the group.