Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Archives - Page 11 of 47

Biden Administration Announces a Major Offshore Wind Plan

March 29, 2021 — The Biden administration on Monday announced a plan to vastly expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a potentially huge new source of renewable energy that has so far struggled to gain a foothold in the United States.

The plan sets a goal of deploying 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines in coastal waters nationwide by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. To help meet that target, the administration said it would accelerate permitting of projects off the Atlantic Coast and prepare to open up waters near New York and New Jersey for development. The administration also plans to offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and invest in upgrading the nation’s ports to support wind construction.

The moves come as President Biden prepares a roughly $3 trillion economic recovery package that will focus heavily on infrastructure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and tackle climate change, an effort he has framed as a jobs initiative. Officials made a similar case on Monday, saying offshore wind deployment would create 44,000 new jobs directly in the offshore wind sector, such as building and installing turbines, as well as 33,000 new indirect jobs.

Read the full story at The New York Times

RODA circulating comment letter on offshore wind policy

March 23, 2021 — The undersigned fishing community members submit these requests to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), noting the unclear decision authority since January’s revocation of the “One Federal Decision” policy that streamlined federal permitting of offshore wind energy (OSW) and other large infrastructure projects.

We stand willing to work with the Administration to use our knowledge about ocean ecosystems to create innovative, effective solutions for climate and environmental change. There are opportunities for mutual wins, however, OSW is an ocean use that directly conflicts with fishing and imposes significant impacts to marine habitats, biodiversity, and physical oceanography. Far more transparency and inclusion must occur when evaluating if OSW is a good use of federal waters.

However, we must be treated as partners, not obstacles. We’ve dutifully come to the table, despite the irony of the “table” being set by newcomers in our own communities employing the finely honed “stakeholder outreach” tactics of their oil and gas parent companies. We’ve diligently commented on the major conflicts and concerns of offshore wind development and taken valuable time off the water for countless one-sided meetings under false hope that our knowledge mattered. Scientific efforts from fishing experts are improving, although they need more funding and time. We can point to few, if any, other true considerations we’ve received.

We need a national strategy before OSW development. This could be modeled off Rhode Island’s Ocean Special Area Management Plan, which created an inclusive state process for holistic OSW planning. OSW decisions must be based on cost-benefit analyses, alternative ways to address carbon emissions, food productivity, and ocean health. BOEM may approve a dozen project plans this year, and new leases appear imminent from Hawaii to California, South Carolina to the New York Bight and Gulf of Maine. New technologies allow OSW deployment in all US waters in the near future, and planning is occurring in the Gulf of Mexico and Pacific Northwest. Selling off our oceans with no strategy to protect food security threatens all of us.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Deb Haaland Becomes First Native American Cabinet Secretary

March 16, 2021 — Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico made history on Monday when the Senate confirmed her as President Biden’s secretary of the Interior, making her the first Native American to lead a cabinet agency.

Ms. Haaland in 2018 became one of the first two Native American women elected to the House. But her new position is particularly redolent of history because the department she now leads has spent much of its history abusing or neglecting America’s Indigenous people.

Beyond the Interior Department’s responsibility for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million Native people, it oversees about 500 million acres of public land, federal waters off the United States coastline, a huge system of dams and reservoirs across the Western United States and the protection of thousands of endangered species.

“A voice like mine has never been a Cabinet secretary or at the head of the Department of Interior,” she wrote on Twitter before the vote. “Growing up in my mother’s Pueblo household made me fierce. I’ll be fierce for all of us, our planet, and all of our protected land.”

Read the full story at The New York Times

America’s biggest offshore wind farm is on the verge of federal approval

March 11, 2021 — America’s offshore wind infrastructure is modest: the only turbines in the ocean today power a small community’s worth of homes from a wind farm off Block Island. But within two years, the number of American homes powered by the renewable energy source could grow to nearly half a million.

Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen says an environmental review released by the federal government this week brings the company closer to its goal of supplying 800 megawatts of electricity to New England’s grid by 2023.

The much-anticipated study from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management found the only major environmental impact from the turbines would be felt in the region’s commercial fisheries.

Many fishermen fear Vineyard Wind is leaving too narrow a distance between turbines for vessels to safely navigate during bad weather. Annie Hawkins, director of the seafood industry-backed Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, said the federal government has also failed to set guidelines for compensating fishing crews that will lose access to squid and lobsters they once caught in Vineyard Wind’s 118-square-mile lease area.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

Offshore Energy Gets a Second Wind Under Biden

March 11, 2021 — The Biden Administration is betting that green energy produced by new offshore wind farms will help slow climate change, but fishers and some scientists say there are too many uncertainties about how the massive structures will affect the ocean and its marine life. The first big test of how the push for wind energy might clash with ocean conservation will likely play out in Massachusetts waters. This week, Department of the Interior officials gave initial approval to the $2.8 billion Vineyard Wind project located about 15 miles south of the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Once the massive wind turbines begin operating in 2023, the wind farm is expected to generate 800 megawatts of clean electricity. That’s enough to power 400,000 Massachusetts homes and businesses.

Vineyard Wind will be the first big offshore wind farm on the East Coast, although smaller pilot projects are running off Block Island, Rhode Island, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an office within the Department of the Interior, are reviewing another 12 commercial offshore wind projects between Maryland and Maine. If approved, those wind farms would generate 25 gigawatts of clean energy for the power-hungry Northeast, more than doubling all land-based wind power coming online in 2021.

Read the full story at Wired

U.S. Department of Interior Jump Starts Vineyard Wind, Inking Final Environmental Impact Statement

March 10, 2021 — In a major boost for Vineyard Wind, the U.S. Department of Interior announced Monday that a long-awaited environmental analysis of the plan to build the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm 12 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard is complete.

The announcement signals a sea change in the outlook for the emerging offshore wind industry under the Biden administration, and it puts the $2 billion Vineyard Wind I project solidly back on track to be first in the race to harness hundreds of square miles of ocean for the development of renewable energy.

“The United States is poised to become a global clean energy leader,” said Laura Daniel Davis, principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management, in a press release Monday.

Completed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the final environmental impact statement is due to be published in the Federal Register later this week, the announcement said.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

As project nears final approval, Vineyard Wind hopes to have offshore wind farm up and running by 2023

March 9, 2021 — An offshore wind project that would provide clean energy to nearly all of southeastern Massachusetts is one step closer to becoming a reality.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released its final environmental review of the Vineyard Wind project Monday, which included a favorable assessment of the proposal.

Vineyard Wind’s proposed 84-turbine offshore wind farm would generate 800 megawatts of clean energy and power 400,000 homes. The company said it would be the first large-scale offshore wind farm energy project in the country.

“More than three years of federal review and public comment is nearing its conclusion and 2021 is poised to be a momentous year for our project and the broader offshore wind industry,” Vineyard Wind CEO Lars Pedersen said in a statement. “We look forward to reaching the final step in the federal permitting process and being able to launch an industry that has such tremendous potential for economic development in communities up and down the Eastern seaboard.”

Read the full story at WPRI

BARRY RICHARD: Biden’s Rush to Put Windmills Off Massachusetts’ Coast

March 9, 2021 — It didn’t take long for area fishermen to realize that Joe Biden is not their friend.

Biden, or whoever is calling the shots these days in Washington, rushed through a review of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind farm, moving the project, expected to be online by the end of 2023, closer to becoming a reality.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an arm of the U.S. Department of the Interior, says it has completed the project’s final environmental impact statement. The project now moves to the final permitting phase.

President Donald Trump slowed the review process over concerns about the negative impacts an offshore wind farm could have on the commercial and recreational fishing industries. Fishermen say the wind farm, some 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, would pose navigational hazards and negatively impact marine life resulting in higher prices for seafood and lost jobs.

Read the full opinion piece at WBSM

BOEM finalizes environmental statement on Vineyard Wind

March 9, 2021 — Moving quickly on the Biden administration’s renewable energy agenda, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed its environmental review of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind plan, clearing the path for the first truly commercial-scale U.S. offshore wind project.

“The United States is poised to become a global clean energy leader,” said Laura Daniel Davis, a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Interior, in announcing the step Monday. “To realize the full environmental and economic benefits of offshore wind, we must work together to ensure all potential development is advanced with robust stakeholder outreach and scientific integrity.”

Located about 15 nautical miles off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., Vineyard Wind is viewed as a bellwether for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry. Its rapid progress in recent weeks is a 180-degree turnaround from December, when Trump administration appointees at Interior moved to kill the permitting process.

Wind industry analysts have predicted BOEM approval would trigger new investment commitments to building out a U.S.-flag wind energy workboat fleet and East Coast port improvements to accommodate up to 15 other projects now in various planning stages.

For the fishing industry, the outcome of the Vineyard Wind approval is a critical test of how the Biden administration will handle its concerns going forward.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

As Vineyard Wind moves toward approval, a wave builds behind it

March 9, 2021 — A huge wind farm off the Massachusetts coast is edging closer to federal approval, setting up what the Biden administration hopes will be a model for a sharp increase in offshore wind energy development along the East Coast.

The Vineyard Wind project, south of Martha’s Vineyard, would create 800 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 400,000 homes in New England. If approved, the $2 billion project would be the first utility-scale wind power development in federal waters. A smaller offshore wind farm — the nation’s first — operates near Block Island in waters controlled by the State of Rhode Island.

Andrew Minkiewicz, an attorney for the Fisheries Survival Fund, which advocates for the sea scallop fishing industry, said the group has concerns about the abrupt shift in attitude from the Trump administration to Biden.

The project appeared dead — or at least on indefinite pause — as recently as last year, “and the new administration comes in and says no, we’re going to go ahead,” Minkiewicz said. “If this were not a clean-energy project, I think there would be an absolute uproar.”

Fishing groups from Maine to Florida have expressed fear that large offshore wind projects could render huge swaths of the ocean off-limits to their catch. While Vineyard Wind is not located in an area critical to the scallop fishery, other potential sites along the Atlantic coast could pose a major threat to scallopers, Minkiewicz said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Providence Journal