August 4, 2026 — Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project is 81% complete and anticipated for completion at the end of 2027 – six months beyond the company’s earlier time frame and at least $228 million over cost estimate, thanks to tariffs and network upgrade costs assigned by PJM Interconnection grid operations.
Blue cited weather, moving equipment onsite and longer installation times for the planned 176 Siemens Gamesa 14 MW turbines among factors in the revised schedule.
July 31, 2026 — Two years after a Vineyard Wind turbine blade collapsed, littering Nantucket’s shores with debris, a federal investigation into the blade failure is still ongoing, with little indication of when it will be completed or why it has taken so long.
Almost immediately after the blade failure, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, a Department of the Interior agency tasked with safety and environmental protection for the offshore energy industry, announced that it would be launching an independent investigation into the collapse. Two years later, that investigation has yet to produce any results.
At this point, the investigation has actually outlived the agency that launched it. On July 10th, President Donald Trump announced that BSEE would be folded into the Marine Minerals Administration and would cease to exist as an independent agency.
In a statement shared with the Current, the Marine Minerals Administration confirmed that it was continuing the investigation, but offered few further details.
“The Marine Minerals Administration is ensuring the investigation is thorough and comprehensive,” the agency wrote. “MMA’s investigation is currently ongoing and does not have a date for completion at this time.”
This mirrors statements BSEE has given in the past.
December 15, 2022 — Amid an absence of a federal framework or authority, nine Northeast states have set out to develop a regional fund to compensate the fishing industry for impacts and economic losses caused by offshore wind development. After more than a year of discussion, they are now seeking feedback from both the wind and fishing industries.
Fishermen worry about gear loss and damage, loss of historic fishing grounds, negative impacts to fish habitats, increased insurance costs, and longer trips (and thus increased fuel expenses) as a result of wind development. They want the farms to avoid fishing grounds entirely, but when that’s not possible, regulations first call for minimization and mitigation. Compensation comes in when the conflicts cannot be avoided or minimized.
Due to a lack of a federal, standardized system, compensation up to this point has been decided on a project-by-project and state-by-state basis, including for Vineyard Wind south of Martha’s Vineyard, which allocated about $21 million for Massachusetts fishermen over the lifespan of the project.
“This has resulted in inconsistencies in estimating impacts to fisheries and the agreed-upon funds used to compensate for such impacts,” wrote the nine states to Amanda Lefton, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), in a November of 2021 letter, adding the current approach may create inequities for the fishing and wind industries.
To address this, the states have been working to establish a “fund administrator” — which they say they assume will be funded by wind developers — that would, in a consistent way, collect funds, review claims and dispense funds to fishermen across the region for economic losses caused by offshore wind projects.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Light
June 20, 2022 — A proposed wind farm off the Jersey Shore could significantly affect local fisheries and boat traffic but generally have little impact on tourism and marine life while helping to move away from oil and gas, according to the draft environmental impact statement released Friday by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
The impact statement is the next step toward winning federal approval for Ocean Wind, a wind farm to be built by the Danish energy company Ørsted and PSEG.
The draft statement addressed concerns by officials in some New Jersey beach towns that the turbines would spoil the ocean views and discourage tourists from returning.
It said the impact of the wind farm would be moderate on tourism due to noise from construction and the new structures, but that the wind turbines could attract tourists eager to see them.
The impact on cultural artifacts could be significant as “the introduction of intrusive visual elements” could “alter character-defining ocean views of historic properties onshore” and work on the ocean floor could disturb shipwrecks or submerged archaeological sites, the statement said.
And the significant impacts on fisheries could be attributed to ongoing regulations, climate change and the disruptions to operations by the construction and installation of the turbines, the report said. Some fishing vessels would decide to avoid the area altogether.
April 25, 2022 — Wind turbines are among the technologies driving the development of renewable energy at the large scale, with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel power plants and slowing down planetary warming. Onshore turbines are already common from Texas to Iowa, as winds are reliable on the Plains throughout most of the year.
That’s generally not the case in Virginia and the Middle Atlantic states, especially during the doldrums of July and August. But several miles offshore, it’s a different story, which makes wind turbines more practical.
Offshore wind has already scaled up quickly in western Europe, and appears to be on the verge of rapid growth on this side of the Atlantic. But for the moment, there’s not much.
Read the full story at The Roanoke Times
March 30, 2022 — Plans for 17 or more offshore wind turbine arrays off the U.S. East Coast mean more imminent peril for the endangered North Atlantic right whale – unless regulators and wind power developers implement sweeping new protection for the animals, according to one expert on the species.
Ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement already top the list of hazards for the right whale population, now estimated at less than 340 animals. Construction work and increasing vessel traffic around wind projects will add to the danger, says Mark Baumgartner, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute whose laboratory tracks and studies the whales.
“We’ve never found a right whale that died of old age,” said Baumgartner. “We find they die from industrial accidents.”
A presentation by Baumgartner is titled “The Fate of North Atlantic Right Whales in an Increasingly Industrialized Ocean.” In an online discussion hosted Monday by the Rutgers Cooperative Extension Service in New Jersey, Baumgartner gave a blunt assessment of the situation.
“Right now, it’s not good,” he said, “unless we change our industrial practices.”
March 25, 2022 — Offshore wind energy projects now planned off the U.S. East Coast will have an impact on at least 13 NMFS fisheries surveys, and a new draft ‘mitigation strategy’ has been proposed by the agency together with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
Limitations on towing gear near turbine arrays, conducting aerial surveys and other impacts from the new energy industrial development are inevitable, and the new document out for public comment will be the subject of online discussions hosted by the agencies March 29 and March 30.
The strategy shows how the development of vast offshore turbine arrays could have profound effects on the annual survey work critical for keeping U.S. fisheries healthy and sustainable.
“For offshore wind developments with approved Construction and Operations Plans (COPs), the opportunity to avoid impacts has passed for NOAA Fisheries surveys,” the draft strategy acknowledges. “In these cases, this Implementation Strategy focuses on mitigating the impact over time through changes and additions to NOAA Fisheries surveys.”
There’s still time to reduce the future impact from additional wind developments, by documenting “impacts in the environmental review process and considering the impacts in the definition and approval process of future wind energy lease areas and lease sales,” the document states. “If these impacts are not avoided or minimized, this strategy can be used to mitigate the impacts.”
Read the full story at National Fisherman
February 1, 2022 — The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance filed a lawsuit Monday against federal agencies for the Interior Department’s approval of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind offshore energy project off southern New England, alleging the government massively failed its responsibility to follow U.S. environmental and maritime laws.
“In its haste to implement a massive new program to generate electrical energy by constructing thousands of turbine towers offshore the eastern seaboard on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf and laying hundreds of miles of high-tension electrical cables undersea, the United States has shortcut the statutory and regulatory requirements that were enacted to protect our nation’s environmental and natural resources, its industries, and its people,” declares a preamble in the lawsuit in the District of Columbia federal court.
RODA, a coalition of fishing communities and industry groups, filed a notice of intent to sue Oct. 19 over its concerns but got no reply from the agencies, said Anne Hawkins, the group’s executive director.
“The fishing industry supports strong action on climate change, but not at the expense of the ocean, its inhabitants, and sustainable domestic seafood,” Hawkins said in announcing the lawsuit. “The decisions on this project didn’t balance ocean resource conservation and management and must not set a precedent for the enormous ‘pipeline of projects’ the government plans to facilitate in the near term. So we had no alternative to filing suit.”
January 31, 2022 — The following was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance:
Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), a broad membership-based coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies, filed suit today challenging the Interior Department’s approval of a massive offshore wind project to be constructed on a 65,000-acre tract in federal waters south of Martha’s Vineyard. The suit, filed in U.S. district court for the District of Columbia, names the U.S. Interior Department and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, among others. The suit alleges that government agencies violated numerous environmental protection statutes in authorizing the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind energy project.
Annie Hawkins, Executive Director of RODA, stated: “In its haste to implement a massive new program to generate electrical energy by constructing thousands of turbine towers offshore the eastern seaboard on the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf and laying hundreds of miles of high-tension electrical cables undersea, the United States has shortcut the statutory and regulatory requirements that were enacted to protect our nation’s environmental and natural resources, its industries, and its people.” She added, “The fishing industry supports strong action on climate change, but not at the expense of the ocean, its inhabitants, and sustainable domestic seafood.”
On October 19, 2021, RODA issued the government agencies a 60-day Notice of its Intent to Sue if they did not comply with the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and other federal environmental statutes. “The Alliance received no reply, and the environmental violations were not remedied,” Hawkins stated. “The decisions on this project didn’t balance ocean resource conservation and management, and must not set a precedent for the enormous “pipeline of projects” the government plans to facilitate in the near term. So we had no alternative to filing suit.”
January 25, 2022 — Advocates for the East Coast fishing industry sat down with free-market critics of wind power for a panel in Austin, Texas, where a conservative legal foundation has taken the fishermen’s fight to federal court.
Hosted by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the discussion featured Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison for Seafreeze Ltd. and Seafreeze Shoreside in Narragansett, R.I., and Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.
“There’s basically been wholesale sellout by the federal government of our fishing grounds,” said Lapp. “We’re talking about the whole East Coast…and the obliteration of fishing on the East Coast.”
Lapp put her legal background to use in years of reading government documents and putting formal comments into the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and other federal agencies involved in offshore wind planning.
“I write every single comment letter like we’re going to sue, to establish that on the record, and I knew that’s where we were going to get with these projects,” said Lapp.
She knew then it could go all the way to the Supreme Court, but that the fishing industry could not do that on its own without more legal firepower, Lapp recalled. That led her to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, after reading how the group had brought a case on the Affordable Care Act to the high court.