Saving Seafood

You Asked, We Answered: How Will Vineyard Wind’s Compensation Plan To Fishermen Actually Work?

August 7, 2019 — Manuela Barrett, a listener, wants to know more about how Vineyard Wind’s compensation plan to Rhode Island and Massachusetts fisherman is actually going to work?

First off, the compensation package assumes that the presence of wind farms will have an economic impact to commercial fishermen. That’s the basis of this entire compensation plan offered to both Rhode Island and Massachusetts fishermen. Both plans include an annual direct payout to fishermen for potential lost income because of the wind farms and also a supplemental trust fund dedicated to paying fishermen for unforeseen situations including damaged gear.

Let’s say, for example, a fisherman gets his net destroyed in the wind farm’s transmission cables. Vineyard Wind will use the money from the trust fund in order to pay for that damage.

The Rhode Island compensation plan for commercial fishermen has been finalized. That’s a $16.7 million plan. But the Massachusetts plan is still currently being reviewed by state regulators. Right now Vineyard Wind has proposed a $10 million compensation plan.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio

US fishing industry’s wind worries divide Trump camp, slow $2.8bn project

August 6, 2019 — The US Department of the Interior (DOI) had seemed poised to move forward with the environmental impact assessment (EIS) needed for Vineyard Wind to begin building the US’s first offshore wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean as soon as this year.

The New Bedford, Massachusetts-based company, a joint venture between Avangrid, a division of the Spanish wind giant Iberdrola, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a Denmark-based investment firm with €6.8 billion ($7.6bn) under management, wants to erect more than 80 wind turbines that are 600-to-700-foot-tall – at least twice the height of the Statue of Liberty — in an 118 square mile stretch of the ocean starting some 15 miles from the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. It would contribute to America’s goal of reducing its dependence on fossil fuels by providing at least 400,000 New England homes and businesses with a combined 800 megawatts of power, while reducing carbon emissions by over 1.6 million tons per year.

One problem: Citing concerns expressed by New England’s commercial fishing industry, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is part of the US Department of Commerce — is not yet willing to give its blessing on the $2.8bn project’s draft environmental impact statement (EIS).

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Rhode Island fishermen critical of wind farm plan

August 5, 2019 — The nation’s first major offshore wind farm won a key approval from Rhode Island regulators in February, but only after stirring acrimony within the state’s fishing industry.

Now, amid an atmosphere of suspicion created by the 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project, the next offshore wind proposal in line is being considered for a key approval by the state Coastal Resources Management Council. And there are concerns that the project, the South Fork Wind Farm, will lead to more difficulties for commercial fishermen who ply their trade in the waters between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard.

Just like with Vineyard Wind, the potential complications arise from the orientation and spacing of the project’s turbines.

Developers Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind and Eversource Energy say that they’ve taken into account the concerns of fishermen by configuring the wind farm’s up to 15 turbines from east to west with rows that are 1 nautical mile (about 1.2 miles) apart. The spacing from north to south, however, would be smaller, with either 0.8 or 1 mile between turbines.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Federal agencies, Vineyard Wind at odds over wind farm setup

August 2, 2019 — All three federal agencies that weighed in on Vineyard Wind’s construction and operations plan have coalesced around the east-to-west orientation of the 84 wind turbines.

The three agencies are supporting a distance of at least 1 mile between the turbines, which is a marked contrast to the company’s diagonal layout plan with less space between, according to the Times review of 349 public comments on the draft environmental impact statement.

National Marine Fisheries Service Regional Administrator Michael Pentony faults the draft statement with failing to fully analyze current data showing “clear patterns of east-west orientation of fishing activity throughout much of the lease area.”

While an east-to-west turbine layout “would not fully eliminate impacts to fishing operations, available information suggests impacts would be minimized for some fishing vessels, allowing them to continue to fish the area and thus reducing the negative economic impacts they incur,” Pentony said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Wind farms could one day power New Orleans, but high cost, other issues cause for concern

August 1, 2019 — For years, solar power has been the rallying cry of New Orleans City Council members aiming to chart a more sustainable energy future for New Orleans.

Its advocates have long said that solar panels — which now adorn a smattering of city rooftops and will soon populate a 200-acre site in New Orleans East — are cheaper and better suited to the coastal city than the giant windmills that create energy in other parts of the U.S.

But other renewable energy advocates, federal officials and representatives of the wind-power industry recently told a council committee that wind power ought to get a closer look, even if costs would need to fall sharply to make a wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico a viable future power source for New Orleans.

Read the full story at Nola.com

Lessons learned from Cape Wind

August 1, 2019 — History can offer hindsight and wisdom to present-day circumstances. The slow, but sure-moving U.S. offshore wind industry is one example. Although much of the sector is looking to Europe and the UK for experience and lessons learned, we can also look in our own backyard. Case in point: Cape Wind.

Remember the controversial project, which after a 16-year battle for developmental approval in Nantucket Sound, surrendered its federal lease area at the end of 2017? The proposal had a good run, and its eventual failure was certainly not for lack of effort.

Lauren Glickman, who works as a clean energy communications consultant — including with WRISE, the Women of Renewable Industries & Sustainable Energy — recalls directing a grassroots campaign in support of Cape Wind. “Working on a grassroots campaign in support of Cape Wind was a pivotal moment for me,” she shares. “It was an opportunity to work on a solution-oriented campaign for clean energy instead of just fighting against the fossil-fuel industry.”

Read the full story at Windpower Engineering & Development

Rhode Island delegation raises concerns with speed of offshore wind review

July 31, 2019 — If the nation’s first major offshore wind farm doesn’t get off the ground, there will be plenty of finger-pointing to go around.

Some may be pointed at Rhode Island’s congressional delegation.

The state’s two senators and two representatives sent a letter on July 12 to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, expressing concerns about how the federal agency has handled the review of offshore wind development. In particular, they want BOEM to be more sensitive to potential conflicts with fishermen and marine life. (They also want the agency to open a regional office in Rhode Island.)

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Delay From Environmental Regulators Blows Vineyard Wind Off Course

July 31, 2019 — Construction of the $2.8 billion Vineyard Wind, the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm, is on hold as developers wait for an environmental impact statement from federal regulators.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management does not technically have to submit the impact statement until early next year, but it was expected in mid-July, and regulators gave no reason for the delay.

An investigation by Reuters found that two other federal agencies — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service — refused to sign off on the project’s design, citing concerns over its impact on commercial fishing.

On Monday, Gov. Charlie Baker met with Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt in Washington, D.C., to urge movement on the project.

Read the full story at WBUR

Federal fisheries, energy agencies negotiate deadlock over Vineyard Wind

July 31, 2019 — Gov. Charlie Baker and other Massachusetts politicians pushed federal officials to break a deadlock over the environmental review of the Vineyard Wind offshore energy project, amid the developer’s warnings it needs an approval by the end of August.

But advocates for the commercial fishing industry say the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has failed to address issues raised by the NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office in Gloucester, Mass.

Baker met Monday in Washington, D.C., with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to urge progress on issuing a final environmental impact statement for the 84-turbine, 800-megawatt wind array planned on a federal lease about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

“I thought our meeting was a good one,” Baker told radio station WBUR Tuesday. “Our goal is to get as much clarity as possible and put together a plan because we really want this project to happen.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Scientists say Vineyard Wind project poses little risk to endangered whales

July 30, 2019 — Marine scientists say concerns expressed by opponents of a Massachusetts offshore wind project overstate the potential risk to endangered North Atlantic right whales.

“There are so many other things that we cumulatively are doing that are having a much more profound and direct impact on the population,” said Chris Clark, a scientist in the bioacoustics research program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York.

The Vineyard Wind project is a planned 84-turbine wind farm to be sited about 15 miles southwest of Nantucket. It is expected to be the first major offshore wind installation in the United States. The state of Massachusetts has chosen the project to provide up to 800 megawatts of power.

The project needs more than 25 local, state, and federal permits to begin construction. Among these is an Incidental Harassment Authorization from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries division, which would establish limits on the numbers of marine mammals that could be injured or whose activities could be disturbed by the construction.

Read the full story at Energy News Network