Saving Seafood

Interior clears key hurdle for wind farms off New York and New Jersey

December 20, 2021 — The Biden administration on Thursday announced it has determined wind farms offshore New Jersey and New York would not pose a major disruption to the local environment, clearing a key hurdle for lease sales in the region.

In a statement, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced it has issued a finding of no significant impact for leasing nearly 800,000 acres in the New York Bight. The bight encompasses an area between Cape May in New Jersey and Montauk Point in Long Island.

“The completion of this Environmental Assessment is an important step forward in advancing the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of increasing renewable energy development on federal lands and waters,” BOEM Director Amanda Lefton said in a statement. “BOEM is focused on ensuring that any development in the New York Bight is done responsibly and in a way that avoids or minimizes impacts to the ocean and other ocean users in the region.”

Read the full story at The Hill

 

U.S. fishing industry teams up with oil lobby to fight offshore wind

December 17, 2021 — Members of the U.S. commercial fishing industry are teaming up with an oil industry-backed lobbying group to fight offshore wind energy development on the East Coast, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and interviews with people involved.

The unusual alliance reflects the breadth of opposition President Joe Biden faces as his administration pushes to expand offshore wind power and other clean energy sources dramatically to combat climate change.

The fishing industry believes offshore wind farms will interfere with vessel navigation and hurt crucial stocks like squid and scallops, while some in the oil industry see renewable energy projects as unwanted competition to fossil fuels.

Several fishing businesses, including a seafood dealer in Rhode Island and fishing groups in New York and Massachusetts, sued the administration this week in federal court in Washington, D.C. to block its approval of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project off the Massachusetts coast.

Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Rhode Island-based Seafreeze Shoreside Inc, a seafood dealer and plaintiff in the lawsuit, told Reuters she had approached TPPF several months ago to see if it would be willing to represent the group.

She expressed no concern about the group’s ties to the oil and gas industry, saying: “If your entire economic future was at stake, and somebody offered to help you, would you care?”

Read the full story from Reuters

Biden admin clears way for N.Y. offshore wind leases

December 17, 2021 — The Biden administration has found that huge arrays of offshore wind turbines off the coast of New York and New Jersey won’t cause significant impacts to the local environment, clearing the way for highly anticipated lease sales.

Issued by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management today, the finding moves the New York Bight closer to being auctioned off to offshore wind developers — a sale that would be the first under President Biden.

Over 7 gigawatts of electricity could be produced in the New York Bight, enough for about 2.6 million homes, according to Interior. That’s close to one-fourth of the offshore wind power that Biden wants to develop across the country by 2030, making it a priority area for the administration.

The wind power would also feed into dense, fossil-fuel-reliant cities located in two states that are hungry for carbon-free electricity to meet their own net-zero goals.

In its finding, BOEM said that selling off as many as 10 commercial and research leases to wind developers in the New York Bight would result in “no significant impacts” to the environment, at least during the phase where developers carry out preconstruction surveys and testing in the lease areas.

Read the full story at E&E News

New England council calls for offshore wind mitigation fund

December 10, 2021 — The New England Fishery Management Council updated its offshore wind energy policy, endorsing calls for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to establish “a compensatory mitigation fund for damages that occur to the marine environment and fish habitat,” and losses to fishing vessels as turbine arrays are built.

The council’s Dec. 7 deliberation came with a new presentation from BOEM on the agency’s push to review and approve up to 16 wind energy projects off the East Coast by late 2025.

BOEM opened a preliminary public comment process through Jan. 7 to prepare a “guidance” plan for fisheries mitigation measures, with a draft document planned in spring 2022 and a final proposal in the summer.

A summary released by the council on the first day of its Dec. 7-9 meetings noted the tight time frame.

“On a more time-sensitive note, the Council was briefed on BOEM’s request for information ‘to obtain input from the public, especially the fishing community, on avoiding, minimizing and, if needed, compensating for impacts from offshore wind energy projects to commercial and recreational fisheries.’”

During an Dec. 6 online Zoom meeting convened by BOEM, fishing industry advocates said the agency needs to take more time and in-person workshop meetings with fishermen to fully understand the likely effects of shutting them out of wind turbine arrays during construction — and how they may not be able to fish those areas in the future.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Why does the NH Energy Department want more information on offshore wind’s impacts?

December 6, 2021 — Offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine could impact New Hampshire’s economy, environment and energy system, and the state’s new Department of Energy has released a request for proposals to find a consultant to help the state assess what those impacts could be.

Offshore wind development has produced controversy in other places. But the East Coast will likely see a major development of the renewable energy source in the coming years.

Though New Hampshire is likely years away from offshore wind deployment, Granite Staters have shown interest in its potential to create jobs and address the state’s impacts on climate change.

The Department of Energy, along with the state’s Department of Environmental Services, hosted an information session Dec. 2 on the RFP to select the consultant, drawing 25 attendees, according to NHDES. The chosen consultant will then produce an impact report. Funding for the report comes from the American Rescue Plan Act.

State Sen. David Watters, D-Dover, chair of the Commission to Study Offshore Wind and Port Development, said the report could provide information on how the development of offshore wind might impact New Hampshire’s economy, ports, fisheries and environment.

Read the full story at NH Business Review

How will offshore wind farms affect Gulf of Mexico fishing? Federal regulators want to know

December 6, 2021 — With the development of offshore wind energy in the Gulf of Mexico likely within a few years, federal regulators are beginning to assess how wind farms will affect commercial and recreational fisheries.

On Dec. 15, agencies that regulate offshore energy and fisheries will hold a workshop for the Gulf’s fishers. The input they gather will help guide the planning and permitting of wind farm lease areas, and potentially lead to mitigation for fishers affected by turbines, transmission lines and related infrastructure.

East Coast fishers are concerned that an expected boom in wind farm construction off the coasts of New England, New York and Virginia will crowd them out and make fishing more dangerous. The country’s first offshore wind farm, a five-turbine project built in Rhode Island in 2016, was small enough that it didn’t get in the way of fishing boats, but its transmission lines to the shore have snagged many fishing nets.

Read the full story at NOLA.com

BOEM approves South Fork Wind ‘habitat alternative’ plan

November 26, 2021 — The South Fork Wind project design will be reduced from 15 turbines to 12 under a modified construction and operations plan, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management confirmed in a record of decision Wednesday.

The agency adopted a “habitat alternative” turbine layout as its preferred plan out of the environmental impact study for the project, planned for 35 miles east of Montauk, N.Y., by wind developers Ørsted and Eversource.

Originally leased by Rhode Island wind power pioneers Deepwater Wind – the startup later absorbed by Ørsted – the South Fork tract is about 19 miles southeast of Deepwater Wind’s five-turbine, 30-megawatt Block Island Wind Farm, the first U.S. offshore commercial wind installation.

On track to start construction in January 2022, South Fork with about 130 MW capacity would follow the 800 MW Vineyard Wind project underway off southern Massachusetts.

Named for the southeast corner of Long Island, the South Fork project is touted as one answer to the island’s growing power supply needs and New York State’s goal of 9,000 MW or renewable energy.

Skeptics dispute the project’s real power potential, and New York and Rhode Island commercial fishermen are fighting against the disruption looming for their industry.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NC fishing industry takes wait-and-see approach on coastal wind projects

October 29, 2021 — There has been a lot of recent discussion on major wind-energy projects along the North Carolina coast, and the state’s fishing industry has been watching closely to see how any announcements may affect their fisheries.

This year has had a lot of big headlines about wind-power on the N.C. coast. On June 9, Gov. Roy Cooper signed an executive order saying that the state would strive for development of 2.8 gigawatts of offshore wind-power generation by 2030, ramping up to 8 GW by 2040.

Then on Oct.13, there were two separate major developments. At the Governor’s Mansion, Cooper signed a compromise clean-energy bill, which will lean heavily on renewable energy, likely including offshore wind projects. That same day, President Joe Biden’s administration announced a major wind-power plan that would span much of the country’s seaboard, with one of the seven proposed sites being off the Wilmington coast. Biden wants to have 30 GW of wind-energy production in place by 2030, in large part using these sites.

Currently, the projects being proposed do not affect areas of the North Carolina coast that fishermen rely on, but representatives of the state’s fishing industry say they are taking a wait-and-see approach to the impact of any future plans.

“The things that are being proposed right now off the coast of North Carolina, those windmills would not be in an area that we actively participate in fishing,” said Jerry Schill, former executive director and current government relations director for the North Carolina Fisheries Association, a trade organization representing the state’s commercial fishermen. “There might be some transit interest, boats going back and forth, but off North Carolina, it would not negatively affect our fisherman in terms of where they fish.”

Read the full story at the North State Journal

 

New York Approves Offshore Wind Farm Landing Plan

March 19, 2021 — In a major step forward for the proposed South Fork Wind farm, the New York State Public Service Commission voted unanimously on Thursday to issue a conditional Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need, a requirement in order for the project to move ahead.

The review covered approximately 3.5 miles of the installation’s export cable from the state territorial waters boundary to the south shore of the Town of East Hampton, and approximately 4.1 miles of the cable on an underground path to a Long Island Power Authority substation in East Hampton.

The developers, Orsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy, plan to land the cable on the ocean beach off Beach Lane in Wainscott, which has sparked furious opposition from a well-funded group called Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott. The group is seeking to incorporate the hamlet of Wainscott as a self-governing village to thwart that landing location.

“In this proceeding, the parties that opposed the proposal argued that the project is not needed or that it does not appropriately avoid or minimize environmental impacts, including impacts to commercial fishers,” Administrative Law Judge Anthony Belsito told the P.S.C. “However . . . the record fully supports a finding that the facility is necessary to transmit electricity from the proposed offshore South Fork Wind farm generation facility to the point of interconnection at the East Hampton substation to meet the needs identified by the Long Island Power Authority in its 2015 request for proposals regarding the energy needs of the South Fork of Long Island.”

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

 

MAINE: Fishermen oppose offshore wind as alternative energy option

March 19, 2021 — As Maine lobster fishermen are working to navigate regulations for the safety of right whales and the effects of global warming on the industry, they are now being asked to share their territory with wind turbines.  

“There’s so many different reasons to oppose it,” said Jack Merrill, a resident of Mount Desert and a member of the Cranberry Isles Fishermen’s Co-op who has made his living as a lobster fisherman for the last 45 years. “They’re humongous. They just dwarf everything we’ve ever seen on the water. Every time they come out with a new plan, they just keep getting bigger and bigger.” 

In an effort to meet Maine’s requirement of 80 percent of the state’s electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and the goal of 100 percent by 2050, there is a project being proposed to research offshore wind energy by installing up to 12 floating wind turbines in a 16-square-mile area, 20-40 miles off the coast.  

To put that into perspective, the land area of Swan’s Island is 12 square miles. 

Recently, fisherman Jason Joyce, a resident of Swan’s Island, circulated a petition in support of LD 101, a bill introduced before the Legislature this January that prohibits offshore wind energy development in the first three miles from shore, also called state waters. 

“It prevents permitting of wind development in state waters and prevents permitting of cables/equipment from offshore wind development in federal waters from being installed in state waters as well,” Joyce wrote in an email to the Islander.   

Wording in LD 101 states, under the bill, the term “offshore wind energy development project” includes community-based offshore wind energy projects, deep-water offshore wind energy pilot projects, offshore wind energy demonstration projects and offshore wind power projects, which are all categories of projects currently authorized by law. 

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander