Saving Seafood

BOEM pulls two areas from New York Bight wind planning

April 16, 2021 — Federal energy planners dropped two areas near Long Island from immediate consideration for offshore wind energy leases, citing potential conflicts with maritime traffic, fishing and seaside views from exclusive New York beach resorts.

The Fairways North and Fairways South areas, named for nearby shipping approaches to New York Harbor, were also seen as less attractive to wind developers for their smaller power potential. Removing them from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management planning still leaves more than 627,000 additional acres in the region available for future lease sales.

New York State officials recommended against planning for leases in the Fairway areas, saying the closest 15-mile proximity to Long Island runs counter to the state’s policy of keeping wind generation at least 18 miles from shore.

The BOEM decision came as the agency commenced online meetings of its New York Bight task force, including federal, state and local government representatives and other stakeholders.

One prominent group not in virtual attendance Wednesday was the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, a coalition of fishing groups and communities. The group has been meeting for years with BOEM planners and wind developers, but in recent weeks reacted with alarm to the Biden administration’s full-court press to expand the industry.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind power lines: Buried under Island Beach State Park, hooking into Oyster Creek

April 15, 2021 — The developer of New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm plans to run the project’s power lines under Island Beach State Park, across Barnegat Bay and connect to the electrical grid at the former Oyster Creek nuclear plant, according to plans submitted to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

Ørsted, the Danish power company that is proposing to build 98 wind turbines southwest of Atlantic City, has applied to the bureau to construct an offshore wind farm powerful enough to supply electricity to half a million homes.

If approved, wind farm construction would involve tunneling under Island Beach State Park and laying power lines under the auxiliary parking lot of Swimming Area 2. From there, the power lines would run southwest under the bottom of Barnegat Bay and connect to the grid at the former Oyster Creek nuclear power plant, which ceased generating electricity in 2019.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

NEW YORK: Latest Hamptons Offshore Wind Farm Idea Shelved

April 15, 2021 — A heavily disputed plan to build a wind farm off the coast of the Hamptons is no longer under consideration, federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) officials said on Wednesday.

Two weeks after the agency first announced the plan to create five new offshore wind farm development zones in the Atlantic Ocean between New York and New Jersey, officials pulled the plug on two of the zones closest to Long Island — Fairways North, off the coast of the Shinnecock Inlet, and Fairways South, off Fire Island.

The two zones “will not be considered for leasing at this stage,” Luke Feinberg, project manager for BOEM, said during an online task force meeting on the proposed zones, citing issues with commercial fisheries.

Commercial fishing groups had opposed the wind farms on the grounds that it will interfere with their ability to make a living. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority officials also opposed the Fairways zones.

“I think we have some challenges that we have identified in the Fairway sites both in the relative size and distance from the shore,” Gregory Lampman, program manager for environmental research at NYSERDA, said during the meeting. “We’ve been pretty clear, and we want to make sure the projects are more than 18 miles from shore. And they fall at 15.”

Read the full story at Dan’s Papers

New Jersey offshore wind to connect at 2 former power plants onshore

April 12, 2021 — A large offshore wind energy project planned off the coast of New Jersey will connect onshore to two former power plants, and cables will run under two of the state’s most popular beaches, officials said Tuesday.

At a virtual public hearing on the Ocean Wind project planned by Orsted, the Danish wind energy developer, and PSEG, a New Jersey utility company, officials revealed that the project would connect to the electric grid at decommissioned power plants in Ocean and Cape May Counties.

The northern connection would be at the former Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey Township; the southern connection would be at the former B.L. England plant in Upper Township.

Cables running from the wind farm, to be located between 15 and 27 miles (24 to 43 kilometers) off the coast of Atlantic City, would come ashore at one of three potential locations in Ocean City: 5th Street, 13th Street or 35th Street. They would then run under the roadway along Roosevelt Boulevard out to Upper Township and the former power plant, which closed in 2019.

Scot Mackey, of the Garden State Seafood Association, said the fishing community’s input was not incorporated into final plans for the project.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Biden banks on offshore wind to help curb climate change

April 13, 2021 — Two wind turbines, each as tall as the Washington Monument, stand sentinel 27 miles off the coast of Virginia, the nation’s first offshore wind installation in federal waters.

The pilot project began producing power last October but is just the beginning for an industry poised for massive growth over the next decade. Longtime conflicts with the fishing industry remain, as well as some landowners, but with the help of a major push from the Biden administration, offshore wind may finally advance in the Atlantic.

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s state utility, plans to install nearly 200 more ocean turbines east of Cape Henry over the next five years. And developers have permits pending for 10 more offshore wind projects along the East Coast, from North Carolina to Maine.

The Biden administration wants to buoy the industry. Last month, the administration announced a $3 billion plan to expand offshore wind.

The ambitious goal is to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade, enough to power more than 10 million homes and cut 78 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions. That’s roughly the carbon equivalent of taking 17 million cars off the road for a year.

Offshore wind represents an opportunity for the Biden administration to address two major goals: reducing carbon emissions and creating jobs.

“Nowhere is the scale of that opportunity clearer than for offshore wind,” National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said in announcing the new plan.

The projects could support tens of thousands of jobs, from maintenance at sea to steel production far inland.

There is just one other offshore wind project currently online in the United States: five turbines in state waters off the coast of Block Island, R.I.

The industry has more proposals in the works, including:

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” said Laura Morton of the American Clean Power Association, an industry group. “We can provide clean energy, slash carbon emissions and create jobs.”

Read the full story at The Maine Beacon

Biden’s Big Bet On Offshore Wind

April 12, 2021 — The Biden administration recently announced a plan to substantially expand the use of offshore wind power along the East Coast, aiming to tap a huge new source of clean energy that is likely to gain widespread acceptance in the United States.

The bold bet would result in the generation of 30 gigawatts (GW) of wind power by 2030, enough to power over 10 million homes and cut 78 million metrics tons of CO2 emissions. Currently, the United States has only one offshore wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island generating 30 megawatts (MW) — 1,000 MW are in one GW.

Offshore wind farming represents a significant opportunity for the creation of “green-collar” jobs, with maintenance and day-to-day operations requiring regular support. Yet, the more labor-intensive an energy-generating operation is, the more expensive the kilowatt of energy becomes. Offshore wind is currently the most expensive form of mainstream power generation available – more than 3x the cost of a combined cycle natural gas plant on a $/MWh basis – when all factors are considered (see chart below). The so called “levelized cost of electricity” or LCOE for offshore wind is climate and labor-market dependent, but the Energy Information Agency sees the regional weighted average LCOE of new offshore wind projects in 2040 dropping t0 65% of 2020 costs in ideal cases.

Read the full story at Forbes

NEILS STOLPE: It’s Not Just Windmills

April 12, 2021 — Demand for undersea cables will only grow as more businesses rely on cloud computing services. And technology expected around the corner, like more powerful artificial intelligence and driverless cars, will all require fast data speeds as well. Areas that didn’t have internet are now getting access, with the United Nations reporting that for the first time more than half the global population is now online.

“This is a huge part of the infrastructure that’s making that happen,” said Debbie Brask, the vice president at SubCom, who is managing the Google project. “All of that data is going in the undersea cables.” (How the Internet Travels Across Oceans, Adam Striano, NY Times, 03/10/2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/10/technology/internet-cables-oceans.html)

I have known Captain Jim Lovgren for most of thirty years. I have worked with him on a number of issues and have grown to respect both his intelligence and his ability to get to the heart of a problem without getting sidetracked by what are generally minor distractions. Based on this I have no compunctions about strongly recommending that you read the piece that he wrote and Borehead has published on his website http://www.FISHERYNATION.com titled Its Time For A Fishing Industry Buy Out By Offshore Wind (and while I’m at it I’ll also recommend that if you don’t already you should immediately subscribe to FisheryNation as well. Borehead publishes material that, while it is sometimes controversial, is generally on target and not reflective of the overly-cautious perspective that seems to be plaguing other commercial fisheries publications.)

If you follow what I write in FishNet-USA, you know that I have been concerned about the potential impacts of wind power development on our coastal waters, and of the critters that you catch that live in those waters, for years. That concern is based on a significant amount of research done by extremely credible scientists, but is too often ignored by bureaucrats, by politicians and by the so-called environmentalists who are seemingly blinded by the “something for nothing” allure of wind power. This is exacerbated by the sense of impending doom that has been part and parcel of what is largely a Chicken Little-like approach of the national print, broadcast and social media outlets to climate change.

And, unfortunately, I see the struggle that both recreational and commercial fishermen are facing with myriad huge windmills planned in our coastal waters as only the tip of the iceberg.

The oceans have been “up for grabs” for generations, but the current crop of grabbers are a passel of high tech billionaires with unimaginable wealth and power who recognize the inherent technological, sociological and economic limitations of land-based and space-based telecom expansion.

But the oceans are out there, they offer unsurpassed access to the major population centers that are and will continue to be the focus of telecommunications growth, and the only other groups that have major claims upon their use are fishermen (and the world’s navies, but unlike most of our elected officials, at least for now they are beyond the reach of Silicon Valley). And as an aside, guess where the major funding of efforts to delegitimize our claims has come from.

And don’t forget the allure of free cooling. All of that cold water just waiting for our modern robber barons to put it to use. And aquaculture. And kelp farming. And the list goes on and on.

So, if you are looking for a comfortable future in commercial fishing take Jim Lovgren’s words seriously. Consider them, discuss them with your colleagues and accept the fact that, at least in some peoples’ opinion the camel has already gotten its nose in the tent and the rest of him is going to soon follow. But don’t forget that wind power is just a starting point. Over 70% of the earth’s area is covered by oceans. Unutilized (except for fishing) from time immemorial, their many potentialities have been “discovered” by the huge money folks, they are on the cusp of over-exploitation, and your future could easily become a casualty.

For a bit more depth on this issue, see my “Fish Wars” or a Regime Shift in Ocean Governance? On the Fishery Nation site (http://fisherynation.com/fish-wars-or-a-regime-shift-in-ocean-governance). For a comprehensive though somewhat dated look at the world of submarine cables see How the Internet works: Submarine fiber, brains in jars, and coaxial cables – A deep dive into Internet infrastructure, plus a rare visit to a subsea cable landing site in the 5/26/2016 edition of Ars Technica by Bob Dormon https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-the-internet-works-submarine-cables-data-centres-last-mile/.

Read the full opinion piece at FishNet USA

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford mayor calls offshore wind ‘generational opportunity’

April 12, 2021 — New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell is of two minds about Vineyard Wind, which after lengthy regulatory delays seems poised to finally get underway.

The mayor is excited about the potential for offshore wind farms to transform New Bedford the way they have many older European port cities, but he also worries that Massachusetts may be missing the boat when it comes to capturing the true value of the industry.

“Offshore wind is really a generational opportunity for a city like ours to leverage its competitive advantages in a way that brings in investment, creates jobs, and improves a city’s quality of life,” Mitchell said on The Codcast.

“We’re looking at roughly a $3 billion capital expenditure with this project,” he said. “That means a considerable amount of local procurement here in New Bedford from things as simple as hotel rooms and restaurant food to welders to any number of things. But it also means the more that the industry settles in here, the higher the likelihood that there will be investment in operating facilities and permanent enterprises. That really is, for us, the ultimate goal, to have an industry cluster here like we have with fishing.”

Mitchell said New Bedford, with its fishing port, is well-positioned to support the offshore wind industry, but it is unlikely to snare manufacturing operations because the city’s waterfront is so densely packed already. Even so, New Bedford has been expanding beyond the state-built New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal to provide more space for offshore wind development. The mayor also said he hopes to tap federal infrastructure funds proposed by President Biden to modernize the city’s port facilities.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

RODA Urges BOEM: ‘Don’t Forget Fishermen’ Amid Offshore Wind Development Process

April 9, 2021 — Fishing communities across the east coast of the United States submitted a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) again asking for a “transparent and balanced” nationwide planning process for offshore wind development.

“Ahead of the Record of Decision for the Vineyard Wind I project, which would be the first commercial-scale offshore wind energy project in U.S. federal waters, the signers request that BOEM adopt reasonable and consistently requested fisheries mitigation measures for the project if it is approved,” the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) wrote in a release.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NEW YORK: NYSERDA chief to feds: No wind farms off Hamptons

April 9, 2021 — New York State will emphasize its position that windfarms off the Hamptons are a nonstarter as federal regulators begin the public process of auctioning off lease rights to waters off the South Shore.

Doreen Harris, the newly named president and chief executive of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, in an interview Thursday, said the state next week will make a detailed case for instead focusing on two other wind areas to the west. Harris had previously been acting chief executive of NYSERDA.

The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, in a highly anticipated announcement last month, released a map of proposed new wind-energy areas off New York and New Jersey in a body of water known as the New York Bight.

Read the full story at Newsday