Daily Archives: July 10, 2021

The man in charge of ushering through Gov. Phil Murphy's ambitious plan to install hundreds of offshore wind turbines off the New Jersey coast, and fundamentally alter the Garden State's electricity grid, didn't have any experience when he took the job.

Joseph Fiordaliso is a former high school teacher from Essex County who took a long and winding political road to one of the most decisive positions in New Jersey's power sector. He has been, for the last three-and-a-half years, president of the state's Board of Public Utilities. That's the state agency in charge of regulating the power sector for New Jersey's 4 million residential, commercial and industrial energy customers.

"The learning experience over the last 16 years has been incredible," Fiordaliso said in an interview last week after the BPU unanimously approved two more offshore wind farms, bringing the total to three since 2019 to get the green light. "I feel like Im still in school. I got my education in energy on the job."

Fiordaliso, a Democrat, has served on the board since 2006 when his former boss, then Gov. Richard Codey, appointed him to the BPU as a commissioner. He served throughout the Corzine and Christie administrations, and was elevated to president of the BPU when Gov. Murphy took office. The BPU consists of five commissioners, including the president, who are nominated by the governor and approved by the state Senate. Commissioners serve six-year terms that are staggered so that no governor has complete control over the board, which is supposed to act independently of the executive and legislative branches.

Fiordaliso got his start in politics as mayor of Livingston, an Essex County suburb of Newark. He said he always wanted to become more political throughout his 15 years as a teacher at Bloomfield High School in North Jersey.

He left teaching and took a job as government relations director for Saint Barnabas Health System. Fiordaliso jumped into Democratic state politics fulltime when Codey, then a state senator representing parts of Essex County, asked him to run Codey's district office.

That eventually led to Fiordaliso's big break. Codey was New Jersey Senate president in 2004 when then-Gov. Jim McGreevey abruptly resigned.

"We ended up in the governors office," Fiordaliso said of Codey's ascension to governor because the senate president was next in line. "You never know where life will take you."

Joseph Fiordaliso, a Newark, New Jersey, native, is president of the state's Board of Public Utilities, which oversees approvals of offshore wind farms. The former high school teacher has been a BPU commissioner since 2006.

Codey served out the remainder of McGreevey's term, and appointed Fiordaliso to the BPU before leaving office in 2006. (Codey, the state's longest-serving legislator in history, is still a senator.)

Fiordaliso served in relative obscurity for more than a decade, including eight years under former Republican Gov. Chris Christie.

"During the Christie administration, they did very little, if any, initiatives for green energy," he said, noting that legislation allowing for offshore wind development off the Jersey coast was passed in 2011.

The prominence of the BPU and Fiordaliso, himself, changed dramatically when Murphy took over and made offshore wind expansion part of a big push toward making New Jersey's power supply carbon neutral by the middle of the 21st century.

With his promotion to president, Fiordaliso became the public face of what is now a multi-billion-dollar industry that New Jersey and other mid-Atlantic states are trying to build from scratch.

Only seven wind turbines currently rotate in American waters, but more than 1,500 are in planning or development stages from North Carolina to Massachusetts, including nearly 300 now approved by New Jersey for waters 10-14 miles off Cape May up to Long Beach Island.

The new power source will be costly for New Jersey's ratepayers, but environmentalists and lawmakers believe offshore wind is one of the best ways to combat climate change by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy to produce electricity. The current plan to approve 7,500 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2027 and build out the turbines by 2035 would provide power for half of the state's 3.5 million residential customers.

"I really believe we have a moral obligation to mitigate the effects of climate change, not for my generation, but for my grandchildren and their children's generation," Fiordaliso said.

On June 30, the BPU approved 2,658 megawatts in new offshore wind power through two wind farms expected to come online toward the end of the decade.

The new power adds to 1,100 megawatts approved in 2019. New Jersey now has signed off on the second-most offshore wind power of any state, behind only New York.

The two projects are a 110-turbine wind farm by Atlantic Shores, which is owned by European power companies Shell New Energies US and EDF Renewables North America, and a 82-turbine farm by rsted called Ocean Wind 2. Atlantic Shores' farm will be located about 10.5 miles off the coast of shore towns north of Atlantic City. rsted's Ocean Wind 2 will be nearly 14 miles off Cape May.

The massive amount of power still needs to get through federal permitting and navigate potential hurdles such as lawsuits from fishing interests and shore communities. None of the offshore wind farms are expected to begin construction until mid-2023 at the earliest, and the two newest projects are not expected to come online until 2027 at the earliest.

The renewable energy source will increase the cost of electricity for New Jersey ratepayers once the farms are built. Fiordaliso and others on the BPU said the agency will closely watch the costs associated with upcoming proposals. He also expects that offshore wind will become more affordable as supply chains for the turbines and the technology improve.

"Clean energy is expensive, no doubt about it," Fiordaliso said. "But you have to do something about (climate change). And it could lead to an economic boom. New Jersey has the potential to be a supply chain for the entire East Coast."

He and others touting New Jersey's aggressive approach to wind power hope their early investments set the stage for manufacturing jobs and new port terminals dedicated to turbine construction and shipping.

All of the fervor around the burgeoning industry has made Fiordaliso a familiar face in New Jersey politics, and the wind turbine brooch he wears on his lapel each BPU meeting clearly states his purpose.

"We wanted to promote wind power," he said of the brooch, which an aide found. "There is so much to do its almost mind-boggling, but you have to start somewhere."

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Meet the Former High School Teacher in Charge of NJ's Offshore Wind Expansion - NBC 10 Philadelphia

LONDON The British government proposed on Tuesday a plan to make it possible to transfer asylum seekers out of the country while their applications are processed and to arrest those who arrive by boat across the English Channel, policies that rights groups say would violate international laws.

The plan, called the Nationality and Borders Bill, was brought forth by Priti Patel, the British home secretary, for a first reading in Parliament on Tuesday. It is the latest measure introduced by the government to fix the broken asylum system, as the Home Office described it in a statement.

Ms. Patel, in a statement ahead of the bills introduction, said that the bill delivers on what the British people have voted for time and time again for the U.K. to take full control of its borders.

It includes proposals to create a criminal offense of entering the country illegally, would give authorities more scope to make arrests and would make it easier to remove someone to a safe country while their asylum claim is processed, the Home Office said.

The plan, if it were to go into effect, would place Britain in the company of Denmark, which recently passed a law allowing for the offshore detention of refugees, and Australia, which has already put in place similar measures. In adopting what until recent years had been considered a fringe approach to the issue, the British government seemingly reversed decades of global leadership in the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.

The bill differentiates between refugees depending on how they journey to Britain, putting them in two distinct groups and basing their rights on their mode of arrival either through resettlement or via irregular means, which would be treated as a criminal matter.

The bill also introduces the option for asylum seekers to be moved to a third country while their applications are processed, but that would be contingent on international agreements that do not currently exist. Some fear that the plan could open the door for asylum seekers to be held in detention centers abroad, where their rights and safety could be at risk.

Andy Hewett, head of advocacy for the Refugee Council, which works with refugees in Britain, said the idea that migrants who, say, arrived by truck or boat were somehow less genuine than refugees who arrived by resettlement, for example, is completely false.

The refugee proposal already seems primed to emerge as the latest flash point in Britains simmering culture wars, stoked in large part by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Michelle Pace, a professor in global studies at Roskilde University in Denmark and an associate fellow at Chatham House, a British think tank, said, From a purely legal position, there is no way that these plans can actually be implemented. She noted that any policy that involved the expulsion of asylum seekers would violate the United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Australia, Britain and Denmark are signatories.

So the question that we have to ask is in the case of the U.K. who is Priti Patel really addressing here? Professor Pace said, noting the public pressure on a government that has increasingly taken an anti-immigration stance.

Critics of the Johnson government say that it has made a practice of raising divisive cultural issues that it believes will translate into votes from the working class voters it has drawn away from the opposition Labour Party in recent years with Brexit being another prime example.

Frequently, apparently harsh or extreme measures have been leaked to the news media or introduced in Parliament with great fanfare, only to be forgotten, the critics say. In recent years, the government has proposed that voters be required to show photo identification, attacked the BBCs financing model and called for 10-year prison sentences for vandalizing statues. None of these measures are currently close to being enacted into law.

Now, critics say, new immigration measures at a time of falling immigration levels are the next to be teed up.

What is, in effect, the stance of this political gimmick, is that theyre trying to tell the general public, We are doing something about this, Professor Pace said.

More troublingly, she added, the moves were part of a broader shirking of international humanitarian obligations by established democracies that used to be defenders of those rights.

I just fear that as a global community, we are really dehumanizing the lives of those that, at the end of the day, are people like me and you, Professor Pace said.

The Times of London reported last week that representatives from the Home Office had met with Danish officials about potential cooperation at a processing center abroad, possibly in Rwanda, though that report has not been independently verified.

Lawmakers from the Labour Party quickly denounced the plan announced on Tuesday, with Nick Thomas-Symonds, who speaks for the party on domestic affairs, calling the measures unconscionable.

Advocates for refugee rights also condemned the proposals, saying that the bill was fundamentally at odds with the rights of asylum seekers under international law and did little to address other problems in the asylum process, citing as examples the huge backlogs in applications and inhumane conditions at existing processing centers.

Professor Pace said that she saw the recent push by Britain and Denmark for offshore asylum processing as part of a problematic policy shift and a worrying trend to target voters and appease those calling for a clampdown on migration amounting, she said, to the institutionalization of inhumanity.

Australias use of offshore detention centers for asylum seekers has long drawn condemnation, with reports of desperate living conditions and high rates of suicide among detainees, and critics say that some of the countrys practices contravene the Refugee Convention. But the Australian authorities have defended the policies as a necessary step to deter irregular migration.

Rights advocates dismissed the British plan as an inhumane and unrealistic political ploy that failed to address the countrys obligations to protect asylum seekers.

It doesnt adequately deal with any of the issues, its just more saber rattling from Priti Patel, said Bridget Chapman, a spokeswoman for the Kent Refugee Action Network, a group in the southeastern part of England where many migrant boats that cross the English Channel from mainland Europe arrive.

Ms. Chapman said that Britain had a shared responsibility to accept people who were applying for asylum and should not rely on countries like Lebanon, Turkey and Mediterranean countries to hold them.

We cant outsource that to poorer countries, thats an abdication of responsibility, Ms. Chapman added. They are not unmanageable numbers.

The rising number of migrants and asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats has been a rallying cry for anti-immigrant groups.

But migration experts say that the number of those boat crossings somewhere about 5,000, according to estimates from The Times of London and the BBC signals a shift in migration routes, rather than a surge in total new arrivals. While boat arrivals were up in the last year, the overall number of asylum applications was down, falling by 18 percent in 2020, compared with 2019.

Historically, migrants and asylum seekers hid in the back of trucks and crossed from ports in northern France or elsewhere in Europe as the main routes of irregular entry, a much less visible phenomenon. Increased patrolling of freight traffic, particularly coming from the French port of Calais, and the shutdown of other forms of travel during the pandemic shifted smuggling routes to the boat crossings, experts say.

The Refugee Council, the advocacy group, recently released a report on the huge backlog in asylum application processing in Britain, despite the drop in new applicants. According to that study, the number of people waiting for more than a year for an initial decision has risen almost tenfold in the last decade, to 33,016 in 2020, from 3,588 in 2010.

Mr. Hewett of the Refugee Council said that measures introduced so far have failed to act as a deterrent, adding that his organization and other refugee advocates would like to see a shift toward establishing safe and legal routes for asylum seekers to obtain humanitarian visas.

Everything the government has done to date has failed, but they seem absolutely intent on following the same path, Mr. Hewett said.

Longer term, the plan potentially sets a dangerous precedent, he said.

What you could end up with is the majority of people fleeing persecution, being detained or housed in developing countries that dont have the infrastructure, Mr. Hewett said. That really undermines our global refugee protection system and the principle of responsibility sharing.

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U.K. Proposes Moving Asylum Seekers Abroad While Their Cases Are Decided - The New York Times

Fishermen in Morro Bay are about to get a much taller neighbor than the ancient volcanic mound that stands like a giant at the tip of the harbor.

Wind turbines are coming.

These things are as big as skyscrapers, says Chris Pavone, whos among roughly 120 fishermen who trap, troll, and drop lines off Morro Bay and Avila Beach.

We want fishing to continue into the future after we're gone, says Alan Alward (right), along with fellow fishermen Chris Pavone (left) and Tom Hafer (center). Photo by Kathryn Barnes/KCRW.

Hes worried about what could become the first offshore wind farm on the West Coast. Approved by the Biden administration, the project would bring roughly 200 floating turbines into the open ocean off the Central Coast.

Its a huge leap towards Californias goal of 100% clean electric power by 2045, but fishermen say a 399-square mile wind farm will become another place they cant fish, in addition to dozens of marine protected areas already out of bounds to them.

If you saw a map of where you can't fish, it's like a mosaic on the ocean, says Pavone. For me to make a really good day and make money, I'm driving an hour, hour and a half in my boat.

The turbines will sit 17 to 30 miles off the coast of southern Big Sur. Industry watchers anticipate theyll be taller than the Seattle Space Needle at roughly 700 feet, but from shore theyll look like faint lines poking out of the horizon.

The federal government granted permission to turn the Morro Bay call area into a wind farm. The Diablo Canyon call area did not receive permission. Courtesy of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

A visual simulation of what the turbines might look like from Piedras Blancas. Courtesy of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The turbine platforms will be floating in waters more than 3,000 feet deep, deeper than turbines have ever known.

From the surface, you might not even know that it's floating, says Walt Musial, who studies future technologies in the offshore wind industry at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. It's supported by a buoyant foundation, and moored with cables to the bottom with anchors.

He says this project, along with a second project that got the green light near Humboldt County, will create the beginnings of a critical mass for the offshore wind industry.

Then California can think about having offshore wind become a significant contributor to its zero carbon policies, says Musial.

The need for this energy becomes more important when you factor in the decommissioning of nearby Diablo Canyon, the last nuclear power plant in California and a major energy supplier for the state. PG&E says it will discontinue its power operations in 2024 and 2025.

This wind farm is expected to power about 1 million homes thats more electricity than what Diablo is currently supplying California,

But the nuclear power plants closure will impact more than 1,000 workers.

The transition away from nuclear energy is a big impact to our region. It's about 1,500 direct jobs and 3,000 contracted jobs, says Melissa James, the CEO of REACH, a local economic action coalition.

The good news, she says, is nuclear power workers can be trained to become wind power workers. We have an energy workforce that will be willing and ready and able to move into and support the growth of this new industry.

A recent Cal Poly study commissioned by REACH found the wind farm could generate at least 650 jobs and about $250 million in annual economic impacts.

Fishermen are concerned that while the wind industry makes money, the fishing industry will lose money.

Pavone worries that getting displaced from another section of the ocean will lead to more fuel costs, fewer fish brought to market, and ultimately, more people dissuaded from becoming fishermen at all.

Fishermen along the Central Coast catch rock cod, albacore tuna, salmon, prawns, swordfish, black cod and more. Photo by Kathryn Barnes/KCRW.

And its not just the wind farm itself that could disrupt the ocean. Theres also talk of a new deep sea port going in along the Central Coast to transport and service these turbines. Itll add more local jobs, but Pavone says the construction of a port will disturb the underwater habitat.

I know the fish would be scared and they would move, he says. When they show up here with their big boats and their rumbling engines and their sonar pinging the bottom and trenching the bottom, that screws everything up, sometimes for years.

Some local residents arent happy about the proposed wind farm. This sign that reads Help Protect Morro Bay was set up along the road. Photo by Kathryn Barnes/KCRW.

So far, only one prospective wind developer has met with the fishing industry to address these impacts. Castle Wind has formed a Mutual Benefit Agreement to minimize the impacts of the project on the members of the Morro Bay Commercial Fishermens Organization and the Port San Luis Commercial Fishermens Association.

Well create a fund for the benefit of the fishermen, and effectively it becomes a revenue sharing agreement, says Alla Weinstein, the CEO of Castle Wind. If her company wins the bid for a lease, shes prepared to compensate each individual fisherman and set up a fund that the fishermen associations can manage and use at their discretion for things like boat improvement, scholarships, and infrastructure repairs.

Pavone and the other fishermen are happy with this agreement, and hope itll act as a model to use with other developers.

The federal government is expected to open the bidding auction next year. The project will likely get split into several parcels and leased to multiple wind developers.

The turbines will position the Central Coast to lead the country in renewable energy. San Luis Obispo is already home to Topaz Solar Farm, one of the worlds largest solar farms, and Morro Bay could soon host the worlds largest lithium battery.

The city of Morro Bay and Vistra Corporation have reached a tentative agreement that would set the foundation for the worlds largest battery storage facility. It would stand where the citys now defunct power plant is, home to a trio of smokestacks that have been an iconic part of the Morro Bay skyline since the 1950s. Photo by Kathryn Barnes/KCRW.

In the meantime, fishermen like Pavone are enjoying their quiet harbor while they can, and making sure they keep their seat at the table when construction begins.

Read more:

'I know the fish would be scared': How California's first offshore wind project will affect the fishing industry - KCRW

On a clear morning in early June, cotton sacks filled with shucked scallops hit the scale at Gambardellas dockside warehouse in Stonington, Connecticut. Theyre being offloaded from the Furious, a scallop boat just back from a 12-day trip.

Owner and longtime fisherman Joe Gilbert runs four scallop boats out of this dock. Up in the wheelhouse of the Furious, he indicated on a chart where in the future, this same trip might be a lot more difficult to navigate.

This entire area here is slated to be a wind farm, he said. Its an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.

In its pursuit of green energy, the Biden administration has given strong backing to the nascent offshore wind industry in the U.S. While Europe has 20 years of experience developing offshore wind, its relatively new in North America.

Last month saw thefinal approval for the very first commercial-scale project, Vineyard Wind, off the coast of Massachusetts just one of 14 projects being considered off the Atlantic coast.

But these arent empty seas. Plenty of other ocean users have concerns about the massive steel turbines being erected offshore, not least commercial fishing, which is a multimillion-dollar industry in New England.

TheResponsible Offshore Development Alliancehas taken the lead in advocating for the fishing industry. Its major concern is that fishing vessels could strike one of the massive wind farm turbines in bad weather. In addition, the spinning blades interfere with the radar vessels use to find their catch. And fishermen like Gilbert worry that the structures will alter the ocean ecosystem as they change current patterns and cause formerly distinct layers of water to mix.

Were racing forward without the proper science to evaluate if this is good or if this is bad, said Gilbert.

But there is research from Europe, according to Amanda Lefton, director of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

While offshore wind is new to us in the United States, its certainly not a new technology in other places, she said.

The federal agency is in charge of leasing tracts of the ocean for wind projects.

As we actually seek to look at what will we actually lease, were even further narrowing those areas to try and do our best to avoid conflicts with ocean users, Lefton said.

Orsted, a Danish giant in the wind farm business, has five projects planned for the Atlantic coast. John OKeeffe, the companys head of marine affairs in North America, said the concerns of the fishing industry have been incorporated into the process.

Its a good storyline to say you had no input, but the reality is theres been input for years, he said.

Orstedrecently signed an agreementwith one fishing industry group based in Waterford, which will use its vessels for research and liaison as the turbines are placed offshore in the companys Revolution, South Fork and Sunrise wind projects.

The spacing that is agreed to is the largest spacing in the world, OKeeffe said. One nautical mile spacing. It does not exist anywhere else.

But the coexistence of these two industries is still in doubt. Inits part of a recent approval of one project, the federal Army Corps of Engineers said the difficulty of navigation means that commercial fishing likely will be abandoned within the new wind farms.

Back in Stonington, thats exactly what Joe Gilbert fears.

Were afraid were going to lose our livelihoods. This is an existential threat to us, he said.

Gilbert wants to know why the turbines must be dropped on top of fishing grounds in the first place. Hed like to see them sited in deeper water far from shore.

Some Atlantic coast wind farm companies are in talks to establish compensation funds for economic damage to commercial fisheries as part of the federal approval process.

This story is a production of New England News Collaborative. It was originallypublishedby Connecticut Public Radio on July 5, 2021.

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Fishing Industry Wary Of Future As Offshore Wind Comes To New England - WBUR

Spains energy and environment ministry has launched a consultation on a marine energy roadmap that includes a target of 1-3GW of floating offshore wind by 2030. The consultation opened yesterday (7 July) and will close on 6 August 2021.

As well as being a key plank of the energy transition at a national, European and global level, Blue Energy is also an industrial, economic and social opportunity for Spain, the ministry stated.

Floating technologies are improving rapidly and are expected to become more cost-competitive by 2030. The sector is at an inflection point, the paper states, with commercial-scale rollout being a key factor in driving costs down.

Costs of small-scale floating projects are currently in the 180-200/MWh range but could fall to 80-100/MWh by 2025 for early commercial-scale projects, and halve again to 40-60/MWh by 2030 as the sector matures.

A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US projected the cost of floating offshore wind to come down to around 40% of the 2019 fixed-bottom figure by 2050.

In recognition of the financial hurdles developers have to face at present, however, the Spanish white paper recommends providing at least 200 million of government funding in the 2021-2023 period to support research and development.

Floating offshore wind will not only allow Spain to generate large amounts of green energy, but also feed synergies in strategic sectors such as shipping and civil engineering, the paper says.

The energy ministry estimates that port infrastructure will require investment in the region of 500 million to 1 billion to support the rollout of large-scale floating offshore wind.

Floating platform manufacturer Saitec Offshore Technologies recently announced plans for a 45MW pilot project off Spains Basque coast, while Iberdrola is planning more than 1.2GW of floating offshore wind capacity across two sites.

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Spain aims for 1-3GW of floating offshore wind by 2030 - Windpower Monthly

Subsea 7 will combine its renewables business unit with Oslo-based OHT, creating a pure-play renewables company focussed on offshore wind.

The combined company will be headquartered in Oslo and renamed to Seaway 7 ASA. It will initially retain OHTs listing on Oslos Euronext Growth market with plans for future listing on Oslo Brs.

Ownership will consist of Subsea 7 owning 72% and OHTs shareholders 28% of the combined company. Seaway 7 is expected to employ around 600 people with an active fleet of ten vessels and two additional high-specification vessels under construction. Its offering will include installation of wind turbines, foundations, offshore substations, submarine cables and heavy transport.

The closing of the merger is subject to approval by the shareholders of OHT. The combination has the recommendation of OHTs Board of Directors. Songa Corp and Lotus Marine AS, with stakes of 51.1% and 25.6% respectively, have also agreed to approve the transaction. Approval by Subsea 7s shareholders is not required.

Closing is anticipated for end of the third quarter of 2021

The Board of Seaway 7 ASA, chaired by Rune Magnus Lundetr, will comprise four directors nominated by Subsea 7 and one nominated by OHTs largest shareholder, Songa Corp. Its executive team will be led by Stuart Fitzgerald as Chief Executive Officer, as well as Torgeir Ramstad and Steph McNeill holding executive roles.

Subsea 7 brings to the table a fleet of two heavy lift vessels, two cable lay vessels and an installation support vessel and experience installing over 700 foundations, more than 30 substations and over 800 kilometers of submarine cables since 2009. Subsea 7s business in floating wind is not part of the transaction.

OHTs fleet consists of five heavy transportation vessels for large offshore wind structures, as well as two high-end installation vessels currently under construction. The first, due for delivery in 2022, is a state-of-the art wind turbine foundation installation vessel equipped with dynamic positioning and a unique smart deck for efficient installation of monopiles and jacket foundations. The second is a jack-up heavy lift vessel capable of installing the largest wind turbines, as well as wind turbine foundations, and is due for delivery in 2023.

This transaction represents an important next step in Subsea 7s Energy Transition journey that will accelerate and enhance value creation for our shareholders, said John Evans, Chief Executive Officer of Subsea 7. As a listed company with a comprehensive fleet and experienced management team, Seaway 7 ASA is positioned to forge an enhanced growth trajectory as a global leader in offshore wind. Subsea 7 looks forward to working closely with Seaway 7 as it launches this next exciting chapter in its evolution.

Torgeir E. Ramstad, Chief Executive Officer at OHT, commented: This is a very significant event in the growing Renewables industry. Subsea 7 is a highly respected company and we are delighted that it sees OHT as a natural partner in creating a new global leader in renewables. We are committed to translating the leading capabilities that the combined company will offer into benefits for clients within the offshore fixed wind industry.

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Subsea 7 and OHT to Combine Renewables Businesses, Creating Offshore Wind Giant - gcaptain.com

180m worth of private sector investment into offshore wind is expected to create more than 1,000 new jobs.

On top of their own private investment, offshore wind manufacturers SeAH Wind Ltd and Smulders Projects UK will each receive grant funding from the 160m Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Support scheme.

The scheme was announced by the Prime Minister last year as part of his Ten Point Plan to build factories to develop the next generation of wind turbines.

Business and energy secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said: Wind is one of the UKs greatest natural assets and were a world leader in offshore wind energy. With the largest installed capacity of offshore wind in the world, we are determined to grow and nurture a strong, world-class manufacturing base so British businesses and our workforce can fully seize the economic benefits being a windy island nation brings.

Todays investments will not only put the wind in the sails of the UKs industrial heartlands, creating and supporting thousands of good quality jobs, they will also benefit the whole of Britain as we work to onshore more manufacturers, attract inward investment and ramp-up export opportunities.

Located on the Humber and at Wallsend in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the manufacturers will supply components to offshore wind farms across the UK, and for export around the world.

SeAH Wind Ltd plans on developing a 117m monopile foundation factory at the Able Marine Energy Park on the Humber, creating up to 750 direct jobs by 2030.

Smulders Projects UK are also investing 70m in new equipment and infrastructure to enable them to manufacture offshore wind turbine transition pieces at their existing site in Wallsend, creating and safeguarding up to 325 direct jobs.

Minister of investment, Gerry Grimstone, said: The UK is well-established as having the largest offshore wind capacity of any country on the planet. These investments highlight how we are building a manufacturing base that reflects our position as a world leader in this key technology and the attractiveness of the UKs clean energy sector to international investors.

UK workers will be building the next generation of wind turbines that will not only help us meet our own climate change commitments but will be exported and can power countries all over the globe in a cleaner greener future.

In related news, the new Natural Capital Challenge Fund will encourage the growth of the green sector in Devon.

Photo by Nicholas Doherty

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Investment in offshore wind manufacturing will create jobs for North - Environment Journal

In todays Electrek Green Energy Brief (EGEB):

The fifth and final floating wind turbine is now connected to its moorings at the Kincardine wind farm off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland.

Connector technology company First Subsea said the last Vestas V174 9.5 megawatt (MW) wind turbine was connected this past weekend. First Subsea will help with the connection of the cable protection system for the dynamic cables later this summer.

Once its live, the 50 MW Kincardine project, which was developed by the Madrid-headquartered Cobra Group, will be the worlds largest floating offshore wind farm, with six turbines about nine miles (14 km) off the coast. It consists of a 2 MW Vestas turbine, which has been operating since October 2018, and five 9.5 MW Vestas turbines. Kincardine will generate up to 218 GWh of power annually, which will be enough to power around 55,000 households in Scotland.

Read more: Biden administration opens up the US Pacific coast to offshore wind

With residential electricity use projected to increase by 2.8% in 2021, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report, 2021s Most & Least Energy-Expensive States.

WalletHub compared the average monthly energy bills in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia using a special formula that accounts for the following residential energy types: electricity, natural gas, motor fuel, and home heating oil. (In other words, those are all fossil fuels with rising costs.)

The dollar amount listed beside each state above reflects its average monthly energy bill:

Hawaii has the lowestaverage monthly consumption of electricity per consumer, 501 kWh, which is three times lower than in Louisiana, the highest at 1,484 kWh.

Washington has the lowestaverage retail price for electricity, $0.0971 per kWh, which is 3.3 times lower than in Hawaii, the highest at $0.3206 per kWh.

New Mexico has the lowestaverage residential price for natural gas, $6.40 per 1,000 cubic feet, which is 6.9 times lower than in Hawaii, the highest at $44.14 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In Northeastern states, between 8% and 62% of households useheating oilto heat their homes, compared with less than 3% of households in the rest of the US.

The District of Columbia has the lowestaverage monthly motor-fuel consumption per driver, 23.46 gallons, which is 3.4 times lower than in Wyoming, the highest at 80.53 gallons.

(Wyoming, despite producing all that oil, you might want to consider going electric.)

You can see how your state ranks here.

Main Photo: Cobra Group

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EGEB: Final turbine is in place at the worlds largest floating offshore wind farm - Electrek.co

A new project aiming to advance development of green hydrogen production powered by offshore wind has been launched in Ireland.

The H-Wind project, led by UCC MaREI Research Centre, is being co-funded by Science Foundation Ireland and four industry partners: Gas Networks Ireland, DP Energy, ESB, and Equinor.

The project will look to position green hydrogen as the means of more efficiently providing energy by bringing the electricity network and gas network together to make optimal use of Irelands offshore wind resources.

H-Wind will also seek to identify new markets for green hydrogen and ensure that Ireland delivers on EU strategy in energy system integration.

The project goals are cost-reduction measures for large-scale hydrogen production from offshore wind farms, concepts for scalable offshore wind hydrogen hubs, procedures for hydrogen safety, the customer value chain, and policy recommendations.

All the partners from the energy sector are involved in hydrogen projects in one way or another.

According to the H-Wind project consortium, Gas Networks Ireland is committed to delivering a net-zero gas network by 2050 by gradually replacing natural gas with renewable gases such as hydrogen. Blends of up to 20 per cent hydrogen with natural gas and biomethane, and subsequently up to 100 per cent are being tested at the organisations new Hydrogen Innovation Centre in Dublin.

Irish energy company and Equinor announced in April that they would jointly develop a 1.4 GW Moneypoint floating offshore wind farm off the West Coast of Ireland, a project that could also include hydrogen production.

DP Energy, the developer of floating wind and ocean energy projects, is also involved in multiple wind, hydrogen and energy storage developments.

At the beginning of this year, Iberdrola agreed to take a majority stake in DP Energys 3 GW offshore wind pipeline in Ireland, which marked the Spanish energy companys entry into the Irish offshore wind market.

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Offshore Wind-to-Hydrogen Project Launched in Ireland - Offshore WIND

Job cuts across Australias gas industry have heightened concerns about maintenance risks on offshore rigs, which unions and environmentalists fear could threaten workers safety and the marine environment.

The international petroleum industry has been in the spotlight after a gas leak sparked the underwater eye of fire boiling to the surface at Pemexs Gulf of Mexico and a large blast at a Caspian Sea oil and gas field this week.

Inpexs Ichthys rig on the North West Shelf in Western Australia. Credit:.

Gas companies operating on Western Australias North West Shelf and in Bass Strait shed workers in 2020 amid a coronavirus-induced price downturn due to plummeting energy demand, which was driven by travel restrictions. Unions estimate about 3000 jobs were lost.

However, both the unions and Australias gas industry peak representative group rejected any comparison with international disasters, arguing Australias safety record was better than other developed nations gas industries in the UK, Norway and the United States.

Our industry is strictly regulated by a world-class regulator. Australia has one of the best offshore environmental regulatory frameworks in the world, said Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chief executive Andrew McConville.

The Commonwealth regulator on Tuesday issued an industry-wide notice reminding companies their offshore rigs require robust inspection, maintenance, and repair to control age-related risks.

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Australian Workers Union national secretary Daniel Walton said the industry had experienced a worrying spate of job losses of late, including in maintenance and safety roles.

Such job cuts will often lead to deferred maintenance, which leads to maintenance backlogs and thats when the risk of accidents does start rising, said Mr Walton, whose union is a member of the Offshore Alliance, which includes the Maritime Workers Union.

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Offshore gas safety concerns bubble up after Mexicos eye of fire - Sydney Morning Herald