Saving Seafood

US gives key OK for 15GW floating wind area in Gulf of Maine

September 6, 2024 — US regulator Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has approved its environmental assessment (EA) for a giant floating wind area in the Gulf of Maine holding some 15GW of potential capacity.

The EA authorises developers to carry out site assessment activities such as installation of meteorological buoys and surveys, a key step allowing a lease sale to go forward. Any projects planned for the region following the lease sale will need to undergo a more thorough environmental impact statement (EIS).

Read the full article at Recharge News

MARYLAND: White House OKs Maryland wind energy project to be built about 10 miles off Ocean City

September 6, 2024 — Offshore wind energy is coming to Maryland, and with it, union jobs.The Biden administration on Thursday approved Baltimore-based US Wind’s project to build offshore wind turbines about 10 miles off the coast of Ocean City.

The offshore wind farm could generate over 2 gigawatts of wind energy and power over 718,000 homes, according to the Department of the Interior.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that the wind energy industry had been “struggling to gain a foothold” in the years before he came into office.

“From manufacturing and shipbuilding to port operations and construction, this industry will support tens of thousands of good-paying and union jobs, provide reliable clean power to homes and businesses, strengthen our power grid against outages, and help reduce pollution – all while protecting biodiversity and marine ecosystems,” the president said.

Read the full article at Capital Gazette

OREGON: 5 companies set to bid on Southern Oregon offshore wind leases

September 6, 2024 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management outlined how its Oct.15 auction will work in a final sale notice released Tuesday.

Five companies have qualified to participate in the auction, bringing offshore wind development experience from around the world.

Avangrid, which is owned by the Spanish electric utility Iberdrola, is the co-owner of the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts. That project was criticized recently after a blade detached from a turbine in mid-July, and truckloads of fiberglass debris washed up on shore, according to the Boston Globe.

Read the full article at OPB

Rough sailing toward Maryland’s offshore wind energy goals

September 5, 2024 — While neighboring states have begun construction on their offshore wind farms, Maryland has yet to install one turbine foundation, though its offshore wind energy goals are more ambitious.

In April 2023, Gov. Wes Moore signed the Promoting Offshore Wind Energy Resources Act, which set Maryland’s goal of 8.5 gigawatts of offshore wind energy generation by 2031—more than enough to meet the state’s residential power needs.

By comparison, New York – a leader in the renewable landscape with some of the most ambitious state clean energy goals – passed a law in 2019 mandating 9 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035. The Empire State just completed its first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in March: South Fork Wind, with 12 turbines that can generate about 132 megawatts of energy. Two more projects have been approved for construction – Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind – that together should produce 3 gigawatts.

Read the full article at The Center Square

NEW JERSEY: Another New Jersey offshore wind project runs into turbulence as Leading Light seeks pause

September 5, 2024 — Another offshore wind project in New Jersey is encountering turbulence.

Leading Light Wind is asking the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities to give it a pause through late December on its plan to build an offshore wind farm off the coast of Long Beach Island.

In a filing with the utilities board made in July but not posted on the board’s web site until Tuesday, the company said it has had difficulty securing a manufacturer for turbine blades for the project and is currently without a supplier.

It asked the board to pause the project through Dec. 20 while a new source of blades is sought.

Wes Jacobs, the project director and vice president of Offshore Wind Development at Invenergy — one of the project’s partners — said it is seeking to hit the pause button “in light of industry-wide shifts in market conditions.”

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Studies Look at Turbine Cables and Lobsters

September 5, 2024 — Two years after its first public announcement in August 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) plans to hold public auctions for eight offshore wind energy leasing areas in the Gulf of Maine this October.

During the public comment period ahead of the auction, BOEM received more than 100 comments, many of which mentioned the potential effects of floating wind turbines on the marine environment, seafood stocks, and commercial fishermen’s livelihoods.

One concern is the large power cables that will transfer electricity from the offshore wind turbines to the mainland. The power flowing through these cables generates electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, that some worry could disrupt the movement of lobsters across the seafloor or even affect their reproductive health.

Scientists who spoke with the Independent said that EMFs from offshore wind farms are not a cause for panic but do merit further investigation.

“Things aren’t just going to turn upside-down dead,” said Andrew Gill, a lead scientist at the U.K.-based Centre for Environment, Fisheries, and Aquaculture Science who has published research on the effects of undersea power cables on lobsters.

It’s important to address the concerns of fishermen with further studies, Gill added. “We need to identify what the concerns are and have the appropriately designed studies to help address them.”

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent

NOAA: pile driving can be adverse to marine species

September 5, 2024 — The federal government is now saying that pile driving for the Vineyard Wind project is likely to have an adverse impact on marine life, although it won’t be a detriment to the population of the endangered North Atlantic right whales.

An announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in late ugust reads that the agency concluded the proposed pile driving for the installation of 15 remaining monopiles will “adversely affect, but is not likely to jeopardize, the continued existence” of whales, sea turtles, or fish listed in the Endangered Species Act.

“It will have no effect on any designated critical habitat,” the announcement reads. “NOAA Fisheries does not anticipate serious injuries to or mortalities of any Endangered Species Act listed whale including the North Atlantic right whale.”

The full biological opinion by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is not publicly available yet. NOAA spokesperson Andrea Gomez told the Times on Tuesday the new opinion will be available on the agency’s library website “any day now.”

Read the full article at MV Times

Biden-Harris Administration Marks Major Milestones for Offshore Wind, Approves Tenth Project

September 4, 2024 — The following was released by BOEM:

The Biden-Harris administration today announced the approval of the Maryland Offshore Wind Project – the nation’s tenth commercial-scale offshore wind energy project approved under President Biden’s leadership. With today’s approval, the Department has approved more than 15 gigawatts of clean energy from offshore wind energy projects – equivalent to half of the capacity needed to achieve President Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. Projects approved to date will power 5.25 million homes.

“The clean energy future is now! Today’s milestone marks another giant leap toward our ambitious goal of unleashing 30 gigawatts of offshore energy by 2030,” said Acting Deputy Secretary Laura Daniel-Davis. “Our work to approve the nation’s first ten commercial-scale offshore wind project is the result of the tenacious public servants at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to expedite the federal permitting process. Thanks to President Biden’s bold Investing in America agenda, we’re tackling climate change head-on, sparking job growth, and ensuring that every community shares in the economic opportunities of this new era.”

NEW JERSEY: Supply Chain Problems Threaten Another New Jersey Offshore Wind Farm Plan

September 5, 2024 — Supply chain problems have repeatedly been cited by wind farm developers as one of the problems they face and now another one of the first projects planned for New Jersey is asking for a pause in its planning process citing a lack of a manufacturer for its turbines and blades. The setbacks for the project known as Leading Light Wind is another issue for New Jersey which has faced repeated challenges in getting its offshore wind development pipeline going.

The project when it won state approval in January 2024 billed itself “as the largest competitively awarded offshore wind project in the U.S.” Being developed in a partnership between Invenergy and energyRe with investors including Blackstone Infrastructure the plan calls for a massive 2.4 GW wind farm to be located approximately 40 miles off the southern New Jersey coast. They won nearly 84,000 acres with a bid of $645 million in the highly competitive 2022 New York Bight auction. New Jersey selected it in January 2024 as one of two projects in its third-round solicitation which was billed as a restart after the disappointment when Ørsted canceled two large projects.

Read the full article at The Maritime Executive

The biggest problem facing offshore wind energy isn’t broken blades. It’s public opinion.

September 4, 2024 — Jim Boyd’s heart sank the first time he saw the now-infamous image of a fractured wind turbine blade dangling above the Atlantic Ocean.

Not because of the fiberglass and styrofoam debris collected from the waters and shoreline along Nantucket in the month that followed. Not because of the potential safety implications the blade failure might mean for the Vineyard Wind project, or others.

Boyd’s first thought?

“This is going to be an incredible PR nightmare for Vineyard Wind and the nascent offshore wind industry in southern New England,” said Boyd, a commercial shellfisherman who retired as the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council’s deputy director in 2022.

He was right.

In the wake of the July 13 incident, deemed a manufacturing error in preliminary review, the chorus of concerns over the offshore wind industry grew to a roar. Which has made the job of selling skeptics much harder: not just on Vineyard Wind, but the slew of projects coming up behind it, including the 700-megawatt Revolution Wind farm being built off Rhode Island’s coastline. The developer announced Tuesday the first of 65 turbines in the project had been installed.

Read the full article at the Rhode Island Current