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Archive for the ‘Offshore Wind’ Category

Energy related Executive Orders

Posted in Alaska, energy policy, Gulf of Mexico, Offshore Energy - General, Offshore Wind, Regulation, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 21, 2025| 1 Comment »

Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement:The US Ambassador to the UN shall immediately submit formal written notification of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

Regulatory Freeze: Agencies may not propose or issue a rule until approved by a Presidential appointee. OMB may exempt emergency or urgent rules (déjà vu for regulators 😉).

Alaska: Withdraws a Secretarial Order intended to halt ANWR oil and gas leasing. Rescinds cancellation of ANWR leases.

Gulf of America: Renaming the Gulf of Mexico.

Unleashing American Energy (long, main items highlighted below):

  • Encourage energy exploration and production on Federal lands and waters, including on the Outer Continental Shelf.
  • Eliminate the electric vehicle (EV) mandate.
  • Requires immediate review of actions that could burden the development of energy resources.
  • Develop and begin implementing action plans to suspend, revise, or rescind all unduly burdensome agency actions.
  • Revoke climate change and “clean energy” EOs.
  • Terminate all activities, programs, and operations associated with the American Climate Corps (RIP 😉).
  • Expedite and simplify permitting processes.
  • Facilitate the permitting and construction of interstate energy transportation and other critical energy infrastructure, including pipelines.
  • Disband the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.
  • Terminate the Green New Deal.  All agencies must immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58).
  • The Secretary of Energy is directed to restart reviews of applications for LNG export projects as expeditiously as possible.

Offshore Wind

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Offshore Wind Executive Order

Posted in energy policy, Offshore Wind, Wind Energy, tagged , , , , , , , on January 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

link

Title: Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects

Main points:

  • New leases: Immediately withdraws all OCS areas from wind leasing
  • Existing leases: Secretary of the Interior shall conduct a comprehensive review of the ecological, economic, and environmental necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases, identifying any legal bases for such removal, and submit a report with recommendations to the President
  • Review of Leasing and Permitting Practices:  The Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Energy, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the heads of all other relevant agencies, shall not issue new or renewed approvals, rights of way, permits, leases, or loans for onshore or offshore wind projects pending the completion of a comprehensive assessment and review of Federal wind leasing and permitting practices. 

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Preview of “Day One” Executive Orders related to energy

Posted in climate, energy policy, Offshore Wind, pipelines, tagged , , , , on January 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »

A senior administration official who is familiar with the executive actions and authorized to brief Fox News Digital said Trump on day one will end “Catch and Release;” pause all offshore wind leases; terminate the electric vehicle mandate; abolish the Green New Deal; withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord; and take several major steps to assert presidential control over the federal bureaucracy.

The senior official told Fox News Digital that the energy executive order deals with “every single energy policy,” and addresses liquid natural gas, ports, fracking, pipelines, permitting and more, while also terminating President Biden polices he said “have constrained U.S. energy supply.” 

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Interesting timing – Vineyard Wind suspension order lifted

Posted in accidents, Offshore Wind, Regulation, tagged , , , , on January 18, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The suspension order for the Vineyard Wind project was lifted on the last business day before the change in Administration and before the completion of the Federal investigation into the blade failure.

New Bedford Light report

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Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum’s confirmation hearing

Posted in energy policy, Offshore Energy - General, Offshore Wind, tagged , , on January 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Burgum on offshore oil and gas lease sales: “The fact that during the current administration the lease sales have been so unpredictable and disruptive, and the fact that they’re projecting forward to have among the fewest we’ve ever had, almost would guarantee that we would see a decline in energy production in offshore in the years ahead because of the lead times.”

Link to the full Senate confirmation hearing

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Congressman Van Drew on offshore wind Executive Order

Posted in energy policy, Offshore Wind, tagged , , , , on January 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

This confirms the second-hand information previously posted. The discussions and debate during the wind program review should be lively!

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Nantucket’s “Hail Mary” falls incomplete

Posted in energy policy, Offshore Wind, tagged , , , , , on January 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the challenge of the Vineyard Wind project brought by the Nantucket-based nonprofit ACK For Whales. This is not surprising given that the odds of the SCOTUS hearing the case were extremely low, tantamount to the completion of a “Hail Mary” pass.

Perhaps Nantucket should have added Jayden Daniels to their team! 😉

Although the SCOTUS declined to hear their challenge, the Nantucket group may still achieve their objective, at least in part, given the looming changes in Federal policy and the financial and operational challenges facing the offshore wind industry.

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Wind turbine incident data updated through 2024

Posted in accidents, energy policy, Offshore Wind, UK, tagged , , , on January 10, 2025| 1 Comment »

Given the absence of industry and government data on wind turbine incidents, Scotland Against Spin (SAS) has done yeoman’s work in filling the void. SAS gathers information from press reports and official releases. A PDF of the latest SAS update summary (through 2024) is attached. You can view their complete incident compilation (324 pages) here. Kudos to SAS for their diligence.

Be sure to see the introductory text at the top of the attached table. Some key points:

  • The table includes all documented cases of wind turbine incidents which could be found and confirmed through press reports or official information releases.
  • SAS believes that this compendium of accident information may be the most comprehensive available anywhere.
  • SAS believes their table is only the “tip of the iceberg” in terms of numbers of accidents and their frequency:
    • On 11 March 2011 the Daily Telegraph reported that RenewableUK confirmed that there had been 1500 wind turbine incidents in the UK alone in the previous 5 years.
    • In July 2019 EnergyVoice and the Press and Journal reported a total of 81 cases where workers had been injured on the UK’s windfarms since 2014. SAS data includes only 15 of these (<19%).
    • In February 2021, the industry publication Wind Power Engineering and Development admitted to 865 offshore accidents during 2019. SAS data include only 4 of these (<0.5%).
    • SAS includes other examples supporting their “tip of the iceberg” claim.

Although SAS is committed to reforming the Scottish government’s wind energy policy, their incident data summaries are credible. It’s disappointing that the wind industry is unwilling to publish comprehensive incident data that would help protect lives and the environment, and improve the performance of all participants.

Turbine-Accident-Summary-to-31-December-2024Download

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ACK for Whales response in support of their petition to the Supreme Court

Posted in energy policy, Offshore Wind, tagged , , , on December 30, 2024| Leave a Comment »

The response by the Nantucket group’s attorneys is attached. Key excerpt:

“NMFS absurdly argues that agency officials, in preparing a biological opinion for a project, must ignore information about impacts on endangered species from other offshore wind turbine projects that are planned and in various stages of development and governmental review. Perhaps even more bizarrely, NMFS contends that, in preparing a biological opinion for a project, it must consider the cumulative impacts of planned state and local projects but ignore the impacts of planned federal projects.“

Background:

20241220155455458_24-337 Reply BriefDownload

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Forbes: “Hidden Costs, Rusting Relics: Decommissioning Wind Turbines In The US”

Posted in decommissioning, energy policy, Offshore Wind, Wind Energy, tagged , , , , on December 26, 2024| 1 Comment »

Forbes (USGS map of active wind turbines): “The U.S. Wind Turbine Database contains more than 74,695 wind turbines built since 1980, spread between 1,699 wind power projects in 45 states. However, thousands of wind turbines are reaching the end of their operational lifespan and need to be either repowered to make way for updated (often larger) turbines or entirely decommissioned to allow for new uses of the land they occupy. Unfortunately, there is no uniform legal framework to regulate the steps involved, nor is there an accepted industry-wide set of best practices, and the environmental costs are considerable.”

Forbes: “As is often the case when new technologies come to market, unintended downstream consequences are not always immediately obvious to the players. Enthusiasm for clean energy initially pushed the first wind turbines into existence in the U.S. without considering the environmental and monetary costs that would be involved in either upgrading or bringing projects to a close later in their life cycle. “

Similarly, BOEM’s enthusiasm for offshore wind projects has increased decommissioning financial assurance risks for power customers and taxpayers. Their “Rule to Streamline and Modernize Offshore Renewable Energy Development” is intended to “make offshore renewable energy development more efficient, [and] save billions of dollars.” The savings associated with relaxed financial assurance requirements come at the expense of transferring decommissioning risks to those who have received little or no financial benefit from the projects.

Related story: “Osage Tribe Wins Again, Federal Judge Orders “Ejectment” Of 84 Wind Turbines By Next December”

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