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  • Offshore wind industry says ‘misinformation’ from foes is a strong headwind it must fight

    Offshore wind industry says ‘misinformation’ from foes is a strong headwind it must fight

    ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The U.S offshore wind energy industry says it needs to fight back against disinformation being spread by opponents of wind farms.

    During the first day of a national offshore wind conference Tuesday in New Jersey, which has become ground zero for vocal, well-organized opposition to such projects, numerous industry officials said they are in a difficult battle against deliberate falsehoods.

    These include thus far unsubstantiated claims that offshore wind preparation is killing whales along the East Coast.

    “We know it wasn’t us, and we have the research to back it up,” said Crystal Pruitt, an external affairs official with Atlantic Shores, which plans two offshore wind farms off the New Jersey coast. “But the hardest thing to do is prove a negative.”

    She said the industry needs to publicly push back against disinformation.

    “If you’re telling me that the hum from turbines 10 to 12 miles off the beach is going to cause me to go insane, that is not real, and someone needs to say that,” Pruitt said.

    Paulina O’Connor, executive director of the New Jersey Offshore Wind Alliance, said she and others in the industry have met with opponents to give them facts about the industry.

    “I don’t think we’re getting through to them,” she said. “I don’t feel like we’re having that breakthrough. It’s hard to predict what crazy thing they’re going to come up with.”

    Last year, amid a spate of whale deaths along the East Coast, offshore wind opponents began linking them to survey work to prepare the ocean floor for wind turbines

    But numerous federal and local agencies say there is no evidence tying offshore wind to the deaths of the whales, many of which showed signs of having been struck by ships.

    Alicia Gene Artessa, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, likened trying to counter disinformation about offshore wind to playing a game of whack-a-mole.

    “Every time you feel you have some local opposition under control, they come up with a new topic and start pumping money into that,” she said.

    One of the most vocal opposition groups, Protect Our Coast NJ, whose members held up anti-offshore wind signs as they picketed outside the hall where Tuesday’s conference was held, said the industry is the party peddling untruths.

    “We are appalled by the gaslighting of our movement without evidence by shills for the climate industry who hope to cash in if offshore wind becomes a reality,” said Robin Shaffer, the group’s president. “This is a case of accusing our group of the very thing that they themselves are doing, muddying the waters, dispensing disinformation to the unwitting public.”

    The stakes are high for an industry making uneven progress toward goals of having at least 20% of the nation’s electricity come from offshore wind by 2035.

    The American Clean Power Association says there is almost 65 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity under development in the U.S., enough to power over 26 million homes.

    But several high-profile projects have been scrapped, including two in New Jersey that Danish wind giant Orsted pulled the plug on a year ago. And a turbine blade failure at the Vineyard Wind project off Martha’s Vineyard this summer has only reinforced a belief among opponents that offshore wind is unstable and uneconomical.

    Jerry Leeman, CEO of the New England Fishermen’s Stewardship Association, decried the announcement Tuesday that the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management chosen two developers to build offshore wind on four lease sites in the Gulf of Maine, calling it “a rushed regulatory process” that failed to take into account the turbine failure at Vineyard Wind.

    “Vineyard Wind is a slow-rolling disaster,” he said. “It is now obvious that foreign mega-developers and their political allies cut corners to bring their flagship project online.”

    J. Timmons Roberts, a Brown University researcher who has studied offshore wind opposition groups, said the dynamic has shifted from denying climate change to trying to discredit solutions to it.

    “When I saw the rise of these groups in Rhode Island, I was very upset,” he said. “All the arguments I’m seeing are sensationalized or just outright false,” including claims that wind farms would actually cause carbon dioxide levels to increase. He added the industry has to do much better making its case on social media.

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    Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC



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  • Big offshore wind project proposed for New York as other sites are evaluated in 3 states

    Big offshore wind project proposed for New York as other sites are evaluated in 3 states

    BRIGANTINE, N.J. — Offshore wind energy projects in New York, New Jersey and Maryland are moving forward, as federal regulators examine the proposals and opponents escalate their legal challenges to the work.

    A large offshore wind farm is being proposed in the waters off New York as federal agencies are pressing ahead with reviews of seven other ocean sites.

    Community Offshore Wind, a partnership between Essen, Germany-based RWE and New York-based National Grid, on Friday proposed a wind farm that would generate 2.8 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power 1 million homes.

    The company also has an active proposal to build a separate project in New Jersey off the coast of Long Beach Island.

    It says its New York project is the largest offshore wind project ever proposed to New York regulators, although it did not say approximately how many wind turbines it might build there.

    “New York and New Jersey are both pursuing some of the most ambitious clean energy goals in the country, and offshore wind will be critical to each state’s success,” said Dan Sieger, the company’s head of development. He said the project would be built 64 miles (100 kilometers) off the New York coast and 37 miles (60 kilometers) from New Jersey.

    In July, Community Offshore Wind submitted plans to build an offshore wind facility in New Jersey that could power 500,000 homes.

    On Monday, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management released an environmental review of six offshore wind sites covering nearly a half million acres (200,000 hectares) in New York and New Jersey, examining their possible impacts on marine life, shorebirds, air and water quality and other areas.

    It found that offshore wind projects could impact marine mammals and fish during construction, though they predicted such impacts would be temporary.

    But it also wrote that even with mitigation and monitoring procedures in place, “development would still result in unavoidable adverse impacts” including an increased risk of temporary or permanent hearing loss in whales and other marine mammals, higher risk of death for sea turtles struck by vessels and birds struck by turbine blades, and alteration of ocean views from shore.

    The American Clean Power Association called the environmental review “a vital step” toward getting new projects approved efficiently.

    On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration determined that construction of a 32-acre (13-hectare) facility in New York City where offshore wind towers will be assembled “is likely to adversely affect, but is not likely to jeopardize” the continued existence of sea turtles or Atlantic sturgeon in the area. The Arthur Kill Terminal Project is being planned for the Staten Island section of New York.

    That same day, in a review of a seventh proposed site, the agency also said a Maryland offshore wind project is not expected to kill or seriously injure any marine mammal species.

    The Maryland Offshore Wind Project could see 114 wind turbines, four offshore substation platforms and up to four offshore export cable corridors built about 11.5 miles (18.5 kilometers) off that state’s coast. Two phases, known as MarWin and Momentum Wind, already have preliminary state approval.

    And the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently granted New Jersey’s Atlantic Shores wind farm project a permit under the federal Clean Air Act. That led one of many vocal opposition groups to add to its legal challenges to the project.

    The grassroots nonprofit Save LBI is appealing the approval, and has filed notice of its intent to sue the EPA. Bob Stern, the group’s president, said the agency did not adequately consider potential air quality impacts on the Brigantine National Wilderness Area and the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in southern New Jersey.

    As of last month, there were 13 cases pending in federal courts targeting offshore wind projects, according to the American Clean Power Association. An undetermined number of additional lawsuits are active in state courts, they said.

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    Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC



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  • Climate change boosted Helene’s deadly rain and wind and scientists say same is likely for Milton

    Climate change boosted Helene’s deadly rain and wind and scientists say same is likely for Milton

    Human-caused climate change boosted a devastating Hurricane Helene ‘s rainfall by about 10% and intensified its winds by about 11%, scientists said in a new flash study released just as a strengthening Hurricane Milton threatens the Florida coast less than two weeks later.

    The warming climate boosted Helene’s wind speeds by about 13 miles per hour (20.92 kilometers per hour), and made the high sea temperatures that fueled the storm 200 to 500 times more likely, World Weather Attribution calculated Wednesday from Europe. Ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above average, WWA said.

    “Hurricane Helene and the storms that were happening in the region anyway have all been amplified by the fact that the air is warmer and can hold more moisture, which meant that the rainfall totals — which, even without climate change, would have been incredibly high given the circumstances — were even higher,” Ben Clarke, a study co-author and a climate researcher at Imperial College London, said in an interview.

    Milton will likely be similarly juiced, the authors said.

    The scientists warned that continued burning of fossil fuels will lead to more hurricanes like Helene, with “unimaginable” floods well inland, not just on coasts. Many of those who died in Helene fell victim to massive inland flooding, rather than high winds.

    Helene made landfall in Florida with record storm surge 15 feet (4.57 meters) high and catastrophic sustained winds reaching 140 miles per hour (225.31 kilometers per hour), pummeling Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia. It decimated remote towns throughout the Appalachians, left millions without power, cellular service and supplies and killed over 230 people. Search crews in the days following continued to look for bodies. Helene was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005.

    Helene dumped more than 40 trillion gallons of rain — an unprecedented amount of water — onto the region, meteorologists estimated. That rainfall would have been much less intense if humans hadn’t warmed the climate, according to WWA, an international scientist collaborative that runs rapid climate attribution studies.

    “When you start talking about the volumes involved, when you add even just a few percent on top of that, it makes it even much more destructive,” Clarke said.

    Hurricanes as intense as Helene were once expected every 130 years on average, but today are about 2.5 times more likely in the region, the scientists calculated.

    The WWA launched in 2015 to assess the extent which extreme weather events could be attributed to climate change. The organization’s rapid studies aren’t peer-reviewed but use peer-reviewed methods. The team of scientists tested the influence of climate change on Helene by analyzing weather data and climate models including the Imperial College Storm Model, the Climate Shift Index for oceans and the standard WWA approach, which compares an actual event with what might have been expected in a world that hasn’t warmed about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times.

    A separate analysis of Helene last week by Department of Energy Lawrence Berkeley National Lab scientists determined that climate change caused 50% more rainfall in some parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, and that observed rainfall was “made up to 20 times more likely in these areas because of global warming.” That study was also not peer-reviewed but used a method published in a study about Hurricane Harvey.

    Kim Cobb, director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, wasn’t involved in either study. She said there are uncertainties in exactly how much climate change is supercharging storms like Helene, but “we know that it’s increasing the power and devastation of these storms.”

    She said Helene and Milton should serve “as a wake up call” for emergency preparedness, resilience planning and the increased use of fossil fuels.

    “Going forward, additional warming that we know will occur over the next 10 or 20 years will even worsen the statistics of hurricanes,” she said, “and we will break new records.”

    Analysis is already indicating climate change made possible the warmed sea temperatures that also rapidly intensified Milton. Clarke said the two massive storms in quick succession illustrates the potential future of climate change if humans don’t stop it.

    “As we go into the future and our results show this as well, we still have control over what trajectory this goes in as to what risks we face in the future, what costs we pay in the future,” he said. “That just hinges on how we change our energy systems and how many more fossil fuels we burn.”

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    Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

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    Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

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    The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.



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

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

    BRIGANTINE, N.J. — 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.

    Robin Shaffer is president of Protect Our Coast NJ, a citizens group that has filed numerous lawsuits in New Jersey against two offshore projects currently or previously proposed.

    Shaffer said his group was at least partly responsible for scuttling two New Jersey wind farms proposed by Orsted that the Danish wind giant scrapped last October, saying they were no longer financially workable.

    “An ancillary benefit of our legal strategy is to give pause or doubt in the minds of investors in the big corporations that are undertaking these projects,” he said. “Last year, we saw Orsted leave its commitment to build Ocean Wind off the southern New Jersey coast amidst the uncertainty of two lawsuits we filed, as well as another filed by Cape May County.”

    Opponents cite altered views of the horizon from wind turbines and concerns about what the structures might do to marine life. They also cite rising projected prices for electricity generated from the wind farms, and point to recent turbine collapses off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts and at Doggers Bank off the English coast as proof the technology is risky.

    Supporters say offshore wind is necessary to combat climate change, which they call the principal threat to the ocean and its inhabitants.

    “Offshore wind projects undergo rigorous environmental reviews and permitting processes, in addition to a lengthy public comment period,” said Jason Ryan, a spokesman for the Clean Power Association. “The current slate of U.S. offshore wind projects under construction and development are among the most carefully planned and analyzed infrastructure projects in U.S. history; we are confident their permits will withstand legal scrutiny.”

    Paulina O’Connor, executive director of the New Jersey Offshore Wind Alliance, said offshore wind is needed to combat climate change.

    “On the heels of one of the hottest summers on record, it is disappointing to see another frivolous lawsuit filed by those with opposing views,” she said of the most recent lawsuit.

    That action was filed Friday by Save LBI, another New Jersey citizen group. It claims that Atlantic Shores, the New Jersey project furthest along its state’s approval path, would violate noise ordinances during pile driving and operation of hundreds of wind turbines. The group says it has several other lawsuits on the way. Atlantic Shores declined to comment.

    Other litigation in New Jersey challenged Orsted’s now-scrapped wind farm plan, a state tax break the company would have received, and even the placement of a power cable that would bring electricity from the project onshore. A group of Jersey Shore towns sued Atlantic Shores, and fishing and environmental groups sued two federal agencies overseeing offshore wind projects. They are appealing the dismissal of their suit after a judge ruled they had no legal standing to sue.

    Offshore wind foes in other states are also turning to the courts.

    In March, The National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog group in Virginia, sued Dominion Energy and the federal government hoping to block a wind farm off the coast of Virginia Beach. Dominion called the suit meritless and said it employs multiple layers of protection for the marine environment.

    Last year, a Rhode Island nonprofit known for its seaside mansions sued the federal government challenging the permitting process for offshore wind energy projects off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. The Preservation Society of Newport County said the presence of hundreds of wind turbines off the New England coast would ruin ocean views from several of its historic properties.

    Also in Rhode Island, the anti-wind group Green Oceans sued the federal government in April, saying it illegally gave Orsted permits for its South Fork Wind and Revolution Wind projects. Orsted declined comment on the lawsuit but noted that South Fork is fully operational and Revolution recently installed its first turbine.

    On the West Coast, the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians in Oregon, whose culture reveres the ocean, sued the federal government Tuesday over plans to hold an offshore wind energy auction next month.

    And in March, fishermen sued California over plans for three floating wind farms.

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    Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryAC



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  • Another New Jersey offshore wind project runs into turbulence as Leading Light seeks pause

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

    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.”

    It seeks more time for discussions with the board and supply chain partners, he said.

    “As one of the largest American-led offshore wind projects in the country, we remain committed to delivering this critically important energy project, as well as its significant economic and environmental benefits, to the Garden State,” he said in a statement Tuesday night.

    The statement added that the company, during a pause, would continue moving its project ahead with such developmental activities as an “ongoing survey program and preparation of its construction and operations plan.”

    The request was hailed by opponents of offshore wind, who are particularly vocal in New Jersey.

    “Yet another offshore wind developer is finding out for themselves that building massive power installations in the ocean is a fool’s errand, especially off the coast of New Jersey,” said Protect Our Coast NJ. “We hope Leading Light follows the example of Orsted and leaves New Jersey before any further degradation of the marine and coastal environment can take place.”

    Nearly a year ago, Danish wind energy giant Orsted scrapped two offshore wind farms planned off New Jersey’s coast, saying they were no longer financially feasible to build.

    Atlantic Shores, another project with preliminary approval in New Jersey, is seeking to rebid the financial terms of its project.

    And opponents of offshore wind have seized on the disintegration of a wind turbine blade off Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts in July that sent crumbled pieces of it washing ashore on the popular island vacation destination.

    Leading Light was one of two projects chosen in January by the state utilities board. But just three weeks after that approval, one of three major turbine manufacturers, GE Vernova, said it would not announce the kind of turbine Invenergy planned to use in the Leading Light Project, according to the filing with the utilities board.

    A turbine made by manufacturer Vestas was deemed unsuitable for the project, and the lone remaining manufacturer, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, told Invenergy in June “that it was substantially increasing the cost of its turbine offering.”

    “As a result of these actions, Invenergy is currently without a viable turbine supplier,” it wrote in its filing.

    The project, from Chicago-based Invenergy and New York-based energyRE, would be built 40 miles (65 kilometers) off Long Beach Island and would consist of up to 100 turbines, enough to power 1 million homes.

    New Jersey has become the epicenter of resident and political opposition to offshore wind, with numerous community groups and elected officials — most of them Republicans — saying the industry is harmful to the environment and inherently unprofitable.

    Supporters, many of them Democrats, say that offshore wind is crucial to move the planet away from the burning of fossil fuels and the changing climate that results from it.

    New Jersey has set ambitious goals to become the East Coast hub of the offshore wind industry. It built a manufacturing facility for wind turbine components in the southern part of the state to help achieve that aim.

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