Saving Seafood

Feds Push Vineyard Wind Decision Into 2021

December 1, 2020 — The Vineyard Wind project has been delayed again.

The project, which is poised to be the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the country, is already more than a year behind schedule and now will have to wait about a month longer. A federal decision on final permitting for the project had been expected by Dec. 18, 2020, but the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management updated its timeline in recent weeks and now expects a final decision by Jan. 15, 2021.

“BOEM received more than 13,000 comments on the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Vineyard Wind,” a spokesman for the agency told the News Service in an email. “BOEM continues to work with cooperating agencies in the review of these comments. An updated schedule is posted on BOEM’s website.”

A final federal decision on the 800-megawatt offshore wind farm had initially been expected by Aug. 16, 2019 but BOEM sent shockwaves through the offshore wind industry in August 2019 when it announced a plan to withhold the final environmental impact statement for Vineyard Wind while it studies the wider impacts of an offshore wind sector that is hoping to ramp up in Northeast and mid-Atlantic waters also used by the fishing industry.

Read the full story at WBUR

With offshore wind, Virginia hopes a 21st-century manufacturing boom will offset a hefty price tag

November 30, 2020 — Maybe, if you squint really hard and the skies are clear, you might be able to convince yourself that you see them, out on the horizon: two turbines spinning far offshore of Virginia Beach.

You can’t, of course — the distance to the Dominion Energy-owned offshore wind outpost is too great. Bill Murray, a senior executive with Dominion, describes it this way: Imagine, he says, that the USS Wisconsin, a World War II-era battleship now docked at Norfolk, were to be beached at Sandbridge and from there fire its 16-inch guns, capable of traveling 21 miles. “Those guns could not hit these turbines,” said Murray.

Until recently, Virginia’s offshore wind dreams seemed to many an equally long shot. Dominion’s two test turbines, known as the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Pilot, were a decade in the making. During that time offshore wind boomed in Europe and China, but the U.S., preoccupied with the glut of natural gas unlocked by the shale revolution, made few inroads into the technology. Rhode Island’s Block Island wind farm was the nation’s first offshore wind venture in state waters; Dominion’s CVOW pilot 27 miles off the coast is the first in federal waters.

Read the full story at The Virginia Mercury

First major R.I. offshore wind project faces further delays, with no clear completion date

November 25, 2020 — The 12-year saga of efforts to build a utility-scale offshore wind project off the coast of Rhode Island has been extended again, with no clear end-date in sight.

International developer Orsted A/S, which has a national hub in Providence, has pulled back on its previously estimated 2023 completion date for the Revolution Wind project slated for federal waters off the coast of Rhode Island. In an October earnings call, Orsted President and CEO Henrik Poulson said it was “highly likely” that the 50-turbine project, along with several others currently under federal review, will be delayed beyond anticipated construction years. Poulson cited uncertainty in the permitting process, which involves comprehensive review by the  U.S. Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, as reason for the expected delay.

BOEM recently pushed back its approval timeline for Vineyard Wind, an 84-turbine project slated for the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. Industry leaders have largely viewed the timeline and outcome of Vineyard Wind, slated to be the first large-scale wind farm to come online, as a direct indicator of when and if other offshore wind projects will move forward.

Exactly what this means for a new timeline for Revolution Wind is unclear. With BOEM’s decision to delay its environmental impact statement on Vineyard Wind until December, pushing off a final ruling until January, Orsted cannot “re-baseline our construction schedules,” Poulson said on the call.

Read the full story at the Providence Business News

Vineyard Wind Sees More Permitting Delays, But Stays on Track

November 24, 2020 — Vineyard Wind, the international business consortium that plans to build the nation’s largest offshore wind farm 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, has been hit with yet another delay after a federal agency moved back its review timeline for a key permitting document last week.

The $2.8 billion dollar offshore energy project was originally expected to have its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) completed earlier this week, with a final recorded decision before the New Year. The impact statement is required before the federal government can make a decision on the project.

But the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management — the federal agency responsible for issuing the environmental impact statement and permitting the project — updated its timeline late last week, moving back the expected date for the final impact statement to Dec. 11. The BOEM online timetable for Vineyard Wind now lists Jan. 15, 2021 as its expected date to issue a formal record of decision on the development.

A BOEM spokesman said in an email that the agency is still reviewing a mountain of correspondence related to the project.

More than 13,000 comments were received during a public comment period on the supplemental environmental impact statement, the spokesman said. “BOEM continues to work with cooperating agencies in the review of these comments.”

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

Proposal Would Build 16-Square-Mile Wind Farm Off Maine Coast

November 23, 2020 — Gov. Janet Mills on Friday announced an ambitious, state-led effort to build as many as 12 floating wind-energy turbines off Maine’s coast.

Mills is on the hunt for a location for the array, in partnership with the University of Maine and the big-money investors behind the pioneering Aqua Ventus turbine experiment near Monhegan Island. But that’s got some fishermen worried.

The effort to win a so-called research lease from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will be led by Dan Burgess, director of the Governor’s Energy Office.

“The opportunity to work with these developers using the Maine-made, Maine-developed floating technology is just a really significant opportunity for the state and for us to continue to take a national and even global leadership position for floating offshore wind,” he says.

The Mills administration is pitching the project as small scale, needing “only” 16 square miles of ocean as compared to lease areas ten times as large for wind projects off southern New England. Still, with as many as 12 turbines running at a capacity of 10 megawatts each, Burgess says they could provide enough energy for 70,000-100,000 homes.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Biden’s administration should charge up the offshore wind industry

November 23, 2020 — Few industries stand to benefit more from the Biden administration’s arrival than clean energy, and the nascent offshore wind sector in New England could get a long-awaited boost as a result.

So far, construction has yet to start on any major offshore wind farm in the United States, as projects before the Trump administration were mired in permitting delays. Now, with a sympathetic ally in the White House, the floodgates could be poised to open.

President-elect Joe Biden has set aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gases, by, for example, rejoining the Paris climate accord, which Trump abandoned, and pushing the electric-power sector to be carbon-free by 2035. Those goals will be tough to pull off without offshore wind.

“You’re poised for a big explosion of offshore wind growth,” said Theodore Paradise, a senior vice president at the power line developer Anbaric, in Wakefield.

Industry executives hope a Biden-controlled Department of the Interior will ease the permitting bottleneck. Equally important: restarting auctions for offshore zones that have apparently been on hold under the current Interior secretary, David Bernhardt.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

RI’s wind-farm plan poised to advance in ’21

November 19, 2020 — Much was made of the Raimondo administration’s selection in 2018 of a proposal for a massive offshore wind farm off the Rhode Island coast that would power as much as a quarter of the state’s electric load.

The project, known as Revolution Wind, cleared a key hurdle a year later when state regulators approved a contract for the wind farm to sell power to National Grid, Rhode Island’s dominant electric utility. And developers Orsted and Eversource Energy would get another boost when Connecticut also agreed to buy power from the wind farm, a move that nearly doubled the size of the project to 704 megawatts.

But since those very big and very public milestones, things have been relatively quiet for a project that could cost more than $2 billion to build.

The paucity of action is largely due to a hold-up in the federal permitting process for offshore wind projects amid concerns raised by commercial fishermen that arrays of towering turbines off the southern New England coast would interfere with fishing activities.

But a Biden presidency is expected to boost renewables overall, and a decision could come in a matter of weeks for the benchmark Vineyard Wind project, the first offshore wind farm to go before the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. A favorable ruling on the proposal could break the logjam for Revolution Wind and other projects.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Expo News: Static electricity

November 17, 2020 — The fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry is gathering critical mass in southern New England, where a forthcoming environmental assessment of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind plan could determine how it and a dozen other East Coast projects might proceed.

Fishermen in the Northeast fleets, heirs to a 400-year New England industry, are deeply engaged on scientific, political and legal fronts, trying to slow what they see as federal and state governments overenthusiastic about granting wind developers chunks of the outer continental shelf.

In June 2018, East Coast fishing industry leaders organized the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance to represent fishermen’s interests to the wind industry and government regulators. Annie Hawkins, RODA’s executive director, says fishermen on every coast need to get involved.

“Just because the current projects are not located in your area doesn’t mean they won’t affect you,” Hawkins wrote in a July 2 commentary in NF. “A relatively small group of developers own the leases, and the federal permitting process is being tested and tweaked in real time.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Making Waves: Offshore Wind and Commercial Fishing

November 17, 2020 — Join NF editors Kirk Moore and Jessica Hathaway for a discussion on the future of offshore wind power with panelists Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance in Washington, D.C.; Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations in San Francisco; and Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association; Montauk, N.Y.

Ask questions for the panel in our Member Forum — details below the video.

We will be talking about the latest developments with proposed wind energy projects off the East Coast — and how soon those proposals will come to the West Coast. Topics include the upcoming federal environmental impact statement on the cumulative impacts of Vineyard Wind and other East Coast projects; the status of wind energy planning off the West Coast; the state of relations and communications between fishermen and the wind industry; and fishermen’s concerns with safety and adequate vessel traffic lanes between turbines.

Bonnie Brady: “It’s really important for fishermen to lock arms and work together before they get run over by these things on their historic fishing grounds.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

BOEM pushes back final findings on Vineyard Wind

November 16, 2020 — A sweeping environmental review of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project is now tracking to be finalized Jan. 15, as the federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management completes its review of public comments.

BOEM received more than 13,000 comments on its Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Vineyard Wind, a planned 800-megawatt turbine array off southern New England, according to an agency spokesperson.

The final EIS is to be published Dec. 11, with the agency issuing its final record of decision Jan. 15 – a month’s delay for the report long-waited by the offshore wind supporters and its critics alike.

The second BOEM study was ordered up by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in August 2019, after the National Marine Fisheries Service Greater Atlantic regional office refused to sign off on the first one. The supplemental study also looked at potential cumulative impacts of Vineyard Wind and 14 other potential wind projects now at various stages off the East Coast.

Read the full story at National Fisherman