Whitehouse attempts to make ocean wind power process more rational
By Mary Lhowe / ecoRI News contributor
The idea comes none too soon. For the past few years, and
longer in some cases, Rhode Island fishers, shoreline residents, and
preservationists have argued their concerns about offshore wind have gotten
overlooked, ignored, or sidelined during the long sequence of federal and state
reviews and permits required to build wind turbines off the coast of New
England.
Within the past year, a citizens group and a
preservationist group have filed civil lawsuits in state and federal courts,
accusing various government bodies of pushing wind projects through the
permitting process without adequate studies, even as wind developers and
governments insist that all reviewing and permitting was legal and exhaustive.
Also, members of Rhode Island’s Fishermen’s Advisory
Board, which advises the Coastal Resources Management Council, resigned en
masse last summer, saying CRMC ignored their concerns.
Whitehouse’s proposed COLLABORATE Act (an
acronym for Create Offshore Leadership and Livelihood Alignment By Operating
Responsibly And Together for the Environment) would “improve permitting,
coordination, and cooperation between agencies and with developers and
stakeholders; establish a holistic process for offshore wind transmission; and
boost support for fisheries and other potentially affected stakeholders,
including the establishment of a compensation fund for eligible recipients.”
Apart from the task of permitting and building wind turbines, a lot of concern has been raised over preparing the existing electric grid to manage a greater flow of renewable electricity, especially as more buildings and vehicles are powered by electricity.
“Offshore wind is an abundant resource that we have to
harness to meet our climate and clean energy goals,” Whitehouse said. “To
unlock the full potential of offshore wind, we need to lower the barriers
standing in the way of growth.”
The country’s first commercial wind farm consists of five
turbines off the coast of Block Island, built in 2016. A large swath of the
Outer Continental Shelf south and east of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and
Rhode Island has been designated as a wind-energy area. Strips of that seafloor
land have been leased to developers.
Vineyard Wind, with a work staging area in New Bedford, Mass., has begun sending power to Massachusetts. The South Fork wind farm (12 turbines about 24 miles off the coast of Newport) is now operating and sending power to Long Island, N.Y. Revolution Wind (65 turbines, reduced from the original proposal for 100, about 15 miles from Newport) received permits last year and is under construction, to send power to Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Permitting is underway for Sunrise Wind (100 turbines about 28 miles from
Newport, although the final number of turbines has changed in earlier
projects).
Some elements of Whitehouse’s COLLARBORATE Act include:
- Creating a director for offshore wind in the White House;
- Establishing a five-year leasing schedule for offshore wind;
- Requiring federal agency engagement with stakeholders in the areas identified by the leasing schedule;
- Conducting offshore wind planning area impact studies ahead of assessing commercial interest in a lease area;
- Establishing designated project managers at agencies with permitting authorities;
- Requiring timely meetings with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and relevant federal agencies;
- Cataloging of outreach and feedback from agencies and stakeholders in filing a construction and operations plan;
- Setting a time frame to issue any outstanding agency authorizations following issuance of the record of decision; and
- Placing offshore wind project judicial reviews with the court of appeals for the circuit in which the affected state is located.
In Rhode Island, the most recent and emotion-inducing
resistance to an offshore wind project came Nov. 22, when the Preservation
Society of Newport County and the Southeast Lighthouse Foundation on Block
Island filed nearly identical lawsuits in U.S. District Court for the District
of Columbia against BOEM, the federal agency with final say in permitting an
offshore wind project.
Specifically addressed the South Fork and the Revolution
Wind projects, the Preservation Society asserted that, in its haste to allow
the wind farm project, BOEM fast-tracked the review process and “violated
federal laws” — such as the National Historic Preservation Act and National
Environmental Policy Act — “passed by Congress to protect the nation’s
environmental and cultural resources.”
The lawsuits claim BOEM bypassed reviews of cultural and
historic places and resources, and also failed to “consult adversely impacted
communities very early in the project development process.”
In its allegation that BOEM raced through the permitting
process, the law firm for the Newport-based Preservation Society, Cultural
Heritage Partners, raised the specter that such behavior could happen again,
with even more fearful results: “BOEM is setting a terrible precedent that
significantly weakens the ability of those same laws to protect against … harms
caused by every other type of industrial development, [such as] fracking on
traditional Native American sites, building highways through the center of
historically Black neighborhoods, or constructing coal-powered plants in
low-income communities.”
The major concern by the Preservation Society is that
turbines visible on the horizon would damage the “viewshed” from Newport, a
place where views of the coast and the ocean are integral to the historic and
cultural heritage of the place.
The Preservation Society said it did not oppose renewable
energy and did not expect to stop the projects. The society said, “The goal of
the appeals is to have projects properly permitted. …. We hope that a court
will order BOEM to accurately assess the impacts on Newport and mandate
appropriate changes reflecting a realistic assessment of those harms.”
The reaction to the Preservation Society lawsuit was
swift. After the news appeared, 13 Rhode Island environmentalists, marine
scientists, environmental academics, and labor union leaders sent a letter asking
that the lawsuit be withdrawn and reiterating the urgent need for renewable
energy.
“The climate crisis is the most severe threat faced by
not only Rhode Island but all of humanity in the early 21st century,” the
scientists, and academics wrote. “… you may or may not understand just how
central offshore wind is to our state’s strategy to rapidly reduce emissions.”
An earlier civil lawsuit was filed in June by the Little
Compton-based group Green Oceans against the CRMC, claiming the agency violated
state law and its responsibilities when it permitted the Revolution Wind
project. That suit is expected to return for its next hearing early this year
in Newport County Superior Court.
Whitehouse’s proposed COLLABORATE Act would include the
following provisions for topics of transmission and fisheries:
Offshore Transmission: Initiate a BOEM rule for
permitting offshore wind transmission; identify offshore wind transmission
cable corridors … and make such lines in such corridors eligible for federal
transmission program financing; establish standards to integrate different offshore
wind transmission technologies; directing to states to evaluate the
incorporation of offshore wind onto their grid systems; and fund the research
and development necessary to build an integrating offshore wind transmission
network.
Fisheries: Establish a fund and a formula that would
provide compensation from developers to affected stakeholders; create a gear
loss program, modeled off of the existing program for offshore oil and gas; and
set up two grant programs, one for research on the effects of offshore wind
development on fisheries resources and one to fund technologies that support
the coexistence of offshore wind development and other ocean users.
The press release on the COLLABORATE Act noted that it
“would complement Whitehouse’s RISEE Act, which aims
to create a new dedicated stream of funding from offshore wind development for
coastal protection and resiliency, by capping bidding credits that developers
can use in lease auctions to protect states’ offshore wind revenues.”