Saving Seafood

Insight: Offshore wind opponents in Australia, Europe lean on US groups for advice

September 23, 2024 — Bill Thompson’s fight to stop offshore wind farms was once confined to the tiny U.S. state of Rhode Island where he lives. Today, he is part of a global movement.

In April, Thompson, who is director of the activist group Green Oceans, got an email from a fellow anti-offshore wind group more than 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away called Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter). They were looking for advice on ways to combat projects off Australia’s southeast coast. In August, he got another request, this time from French group PIEBIEM fighting projects in Brittany.

Read the full article at Reuters

Outer Cape offshore wind auction scheduled; wind area has changed

September 23, 2024 — The federal government has set a date of Oct. 29 to auction ocean leases for offshore wind farms off the Outer Cape, and the number of acres to be auctioned is smaller than previously proposed.

The eight lease areas now total just over 850,000 acres, a reduction of about 12 percent since this summer’s public meeting in Eastham.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said it made the change in response to comments from various sources, including the fishing industry, the U.S. Coast Guard, navigation interests, and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full article at CAI

Gulf of Maine offshore wind lease sale announced

September 20, 2024 — Today, the Department of the Interior announced it will hold an offshore wind energy lease sale on Oct. 29, 2024, for eight areas on the Outer Continental Shelf off Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. If fully developed, these areas have a potential capacity of approximately 13 gigawatts of clean offshore wind energy, which could power more than 4.5 million homes.

The announcement follows the government’s recent announcement that it has approved more than 15 gigawatts of clean energy from offshore wind projects since the start of the Biden-Harris administration — equivalent to half of the capacity needed to achieve President Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department has held five offshore wind lease sales, including a record-breaking sale offshore New York and sales offshore the Pacific, Central Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico, and approved 10 commercial-scale offshore wind projects. Earlier this year, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced a schedule of potential additional lease sales through 2028.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Lawsuits buffet US offshore wind projects, seeking to end or delay them

September 19, 2024 — Opponents of offshore wind around the U.S. are pelting projects with lawsuits seeking to cancel them or tie them up for years in costly litigation.

The court cases represent another hurdle the nascent industry must overcome, particularly along the East Coast where opposition to offshore wind farms is vocal and well-organized.

They add another pressure point for an industry already struggling with escalating prices, shaky supply chains, and a handful of highly publicized turbine failures that opponents are seizing on as proof that the structures are unreliable and unsafe, something the industry denies.

There are 13 cases pending in federal courts targeting offshore wind projects, according to the American Clean Power Association, an offshore wind trade group. An undetermined number of additional lawsuits are active in state courts, they said.

Read the full article at the Associated Press 

Tribes sue BOEM for lack of research in wind energy project on the Oregon Coast

September 19, 2024 — A lawsuit filed by the Confederated Tribes of the Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians alleges that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (“BOEM”) conducted insufficient analysis of offshore wind energy impacts.

The development of offshore wind energy areas are set to take place in two regions off the Oregon Coast, near Coos Bay and Brookings.

BOEM recently authorized the sale of leases for approximately 195,012 acres for wind energy development, and the plaintiff argues the areas are within the Tribe’s ancestral territory, which contain critical fish and marine wildlife habitats.

Read the full article at KATU

Against the Wind: Questions About BOEM’s Fisheries Analysis

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced the final sale notice for the Gulf of Maine offshore wind project lease areas on Sept. 16. The agency shrunk the overall area by 120,000 acres, removing significant portions of the two northern leases off the coast of Maine, carving a transit lane between the two farthest-offshore southern areas, and shaving small portions off other southern areas.

In an email to the Independent, BOEM spokeswoman Alison Ferris said her agency made the changes to avoid North Atlantic right whale areas, establish a barrier around Jeffrey’s Bank Habitat Management Area off Maine, and respond to feedback from at least three different fisheries working groups.

This decision did little to satisfy Jerry Leeman, a Harpswell, Maine-based former commercial fisherman and founder of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association (NEFSA), an organization that opposes the Gulf of Maine offshore wind area.

NEFSA “remains steadfast in its opposition,” wrote Leeman in a press release, “despite the shrinking of the original areas.”

Four days earlier, on Sept. 12, Leeman gave a talk he called a “wind energy informational” at the Truro Public Library. Leeman drew on his own experience and described what he sees as BOEM’s lack of good baseline data for the offshore wind project.

“From a sea captain’s perspective, if you don’t know where you are, then surely you don’t know where you’re going,” Leeman told his audience.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent 

Gulf of Maine offshore wind leases to be auctioned in October

September 17, 2024 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will hold an auction for offshore wind leases in the Gulf of Maine in late October, it announced Monday.

Eight lease areas off the shores of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine are up for grabs. These lease areas were reduced by 12% – or more than 116,000 acres – from the proposed sale notice, issued in April, in response to concerns from interests including the fishing industry, BOEM said in its final sale notice set to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.

Winning a bid “does not authorize the construction and operations of an offshore wind facility,” BOEM said in a news release Monday. Instead, that bidder can then submit “project-specific plans,” which will be subject to “environmental, technical, and public reviews” before BOEM decides whether to approve it, the bureau said.

Developing offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine has been a political debate in New Hampshire. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu has embraced the energy opportunity, while his pick to replace him, former U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, has said she doesn’t think the projects are right for the state. Democratic candidate Joyce Craig, the former Manchester mayor, is for them.

Read the full article at nhpr

Fishers want ‘incredibly important’ Georges Bank protected against offshore wind development

September 17, 2024 — As Nova Scotia rushes to establish an offshore wind industry, some fishers are calling for explicit protection for the rich fishing ground on Georges Bank.

The cabinet minister in charge of developing renewable energy projects says he will keep turbines off the bank, but not by changing a piece of legislation that is now moving through Province House.

Ian McIsaac, president of the Seafood Producers Association of Nova Scotia, brought his concerns to a legislature committee Monday as it reviews a new bill that, if passed into law, would enable offshore wind development.

McIsaac said Bill 471 doesn’t update the Georges Bank moratorium that’s been in place against offshore petroleum development since the 1980s.

“We feel this is a technical error,” he said.

“In the past, whenever the moratorium has come up for consideration, it has been subject to intense study of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of change, to determine if, in fact, such changes are appropriate.”

Read the full article at CBC News

NEW JERSEY: New Jersey’s Wind Farm Future Hits More Road Blocks with Supply Chain and Safety Issues

September 16, 2024 — The Leading Light Wind offshore wind project, planned for development off the coast of Long Beach Island, NJ, has hit a snag.

The project, managed by Invenergy and energyRe, has faced difficulties securing a turbine blade supplier, a critical component for building the wind farm. Initially, the project aimed to use GE Vernova’s 18 MW Haliade-X turbines, but GE unexpectedly withdrew from providing them. This left the developers scrambling to find alternatives​.

Efforts to source turbines from Siemens Gamesa also encountered problems, as the company significantly raised its prices, while Vestas, another major manufacturer, was deemed unsuitable for the project due to technical and financial constraints.

Read the full article at Shore News Network

Biden-Harris Administration Announces First Offshore Wind Lease Sale in the Gulf of Maine

September 16, 2024 — The following was released by BOEM:

The Department of the Interior today announced it will hold an offshore wind energy lease sale on Oct. 29, 2024, for eight areas on the Outer Continental Shelf off Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. If fully developed, these areas have a potential capacity of approximately 13 gigawatts of clean offshore wind energy, which could power more than 4.5 million homes. The announcement follows the Department’s recent announcement that it has approved more than 15 gigawatts of clean energy from offshore wind projects since the start of the Biden-Harris administration—equivalent to half of the capacity needed to achieve President Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.  

Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department has held five offshore wind lease sales, including a record-breaking sale offshore New York and sales offshore the Pacific, Central Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico, and approved 10 commercial-scale offshore wind projects. Earlier this year, Secretary Haaland announced a schedule of potential additional lease sales through 2028.