Tag Archives: Dead whales

Licenced to Kill: Wind Industry’s Atlantic Whale Slaughter Gets New Govt. Greenlight

From STOP THESE THINGS

The wind industry’s licence to kill whales and other marine mammals is the perfect example of institutional corruption. As the cetacean carnage continues, one might think that the US government might pause (just for a moment) and consider revoking their ‘take permits’ – rather than simply continuing to green light the wind industry’s wholesale whale slaughter. But, not a bit of it, as Vijay Jayaraj explains in the first piece below.

As we have outlined on numerous occasions, the principal cause of whale (and other marine mammal) deaths is the noise generated during the construction of these things offshore, which is the subject of the second piece by Rob Rand, one of America’s leading acoustic experts.

NOAA Permits Wind Energy Operators to Harass and Kill Whales
California Globe
Vijay Jayaraj
29 April 2024

Wind energy is clean and green. It is the magic switch to turn off global heating. And unicorns are real. You may name your most cherished illusion among those three if you please. But it will not change the fact that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and wind energy companies are complicit in a state-sanctioned, modern-day butchery of marine mammals along the U.S. East Coast.

NOAA-issued permits allow each operator of wind turbines to kill or harass 100s of whales annually, a fact that climate doomsayers and green energy enthusiasts ignore or deny in a manner reminiscent of flat-earthers dismissing photographs of our blue sphere suspended in the void of outer space.

NOAA: From Whale Hero to Whale Villain
On its website, NOAA claims that it works “to protect marine species populations from decline and extinction, conduct research to understand their health and environment, and evaluate and monitor human activities that might affect them to ensure future generations may enjoy them.”

NOAA says that the Marine Mammal Protection Act requires it to protect all whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and sea lions from “take” by U.S. citizens in the nation’s waters. “Take” is NOAA lingo for harassing, hunting, capturing, killing or attempting to do any of those.

However “exemptions” to this protection are granted to allow lethal and non-lethal interference with cetaceans — whales, dolphins and porpoises — by wind energy developers along the Eastern Seaboard.

Known as “Incidental Take/Harassment Authorizations” (IHAs), these exemptions give wind operators latitude within the regulation to kill and harass marine mammals while carrying out sonar surveys for site characterization and other activities related to construction and operations.

The species authorized to be harassed in these IHAs include the endangered North Atlantic right whale, fin whale, sperm whale, sei whale, minke whale, humpback whale, long-finned pilot whale, Atlantic white-sided dolphin, common bottlenose dolphin, short-beaked common dolphin, Atlantic spotted dolphin, Risso’s dolphin, harbor porpoise, harbor seal and gray seal.

For example, Bluepoint Wind, LLC, is allowed to kill or harass 270 whales, including 11 right whales and 149 minke whales between March 2024 and February 2025 in the coastal waters of New York and New Jersey, a region known as the New York Bight. The “harassment” quota includes other marine mammals as well.

Other active IHAs for wind operators include the following: Dominion Energy Virginia, 599 whales in the next five years, including 17 Endangered right whales); Empire Offshore Winds, 509 whales; Ocean Wind, 248 whales; TerraSond, 381 whales; Community Offshore Wind, 7,809 dolphins; Orsted Wind Power North America, 6,000 short-beaked common dolphin. There are many others.

NOAA divides these IHAs into two categories: Level A harassment results has the potential to injure or kill, while harassment at the Level B may cause changes in behavioral patterns. Most of the authorizations listed above are Level B, but many of the companies have been authorized for Level A for various species, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Please note that the most common cause of death for whales on the eastern seaboard of the United States is from entanglements or vessel strikes. Level B harassment may indirectly lead to increased whale deaths by forcing them into busy shipping channels.

It is critical to note that the NOAA does not give scientific reasons to prove that Level B harassments are non-lethal or that they would not cause permanent injury.

The bipolar NOAA itself admits that humpback whale deaths along the Atlantic Coast have been unusually high since 2016, with the highest count of 37 in the year 2023 being when IHAs were more common. Similarly, NOAA has documented the unusual mortality rate of the North Atlantic right whales since 2017.

The question is why would NOAA authorize wind companies to harass and kill whales at a time of increasing deaths? And who gives NOAA permission to do so?

NOAA’s treatment of these marine mammals contrasts starkly with its institutional ethos of shielding these gentle ocean giants from peril and even demise. Instead, NOAA has seemingly embraced offshore wind farms with the unwavering resolve of climate alarmists.

Frankly, I’ve grown weary of ceaseless calls for more evidence connecting animal mortality with wind energy activities and, all the while NOAA authorizes more killing.
California Globe

Pile Driving Noise
Technical Report
Rand Acoustics, LLC
28 March 2024

Abstract
This technical report presents the methodology, analysis, and results of an independent investigation of underwater noise levels from wind turbine pile driving operations, conducted southwest of Nantucket on November 2, 2023.

Conclusions
This paper presents the methodology, analysis, and results of an independent investigation of underwater noise levels from pile driving by the crane ship Orion utilized as a pile driving vessel
in the Vineyard Wind BOEM Lease Area OCS‐A 0501 southwest of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The pile driving operations included double bubble curtains and hydro damper net for noise controls. Nonetheless, the survey results find pile driving impulsive sound levels are similar to seismic airgun arrays and raise concerns about heightened adverse noise impacts on
marine mammals.

  1. Peak levels measured up to 180 dB re 1uPa at 1.06 km. The calculated source level SL,pk is 241 dB with noise reduction mitigations employed. Despite double bubble curtains and hydrodamper, pile driving peak levels are comparable to seismic airgun arrays. Propagation loss was 20.1log(r), consistent with spherical spreading.
  2. NMFS relies on the RMS sound level for setting protective radii around impulsive pile driving. There are several different RMS computation methods. RMS was analyzed by applying two methods per Madsen 2005, with a 200ms window consistent with the limits of the mammalian hearing window, and a 90pct window using the 5- to 95-percent effective signal duration. The 90-percent RMS consistently underestimated by 2 to 6 dB the 200ms RMS for mammalian hearing response recommended in Madsen 2005. This disparity is consistent with the observations in Madsen 2005 and of the waveforms acquired in this survey that show lengthening with distance, increased numbers of reflections and pre-peak impulse arrivals of impulse energy through the sediment. It is concluded that at distances of 1 to 8 kilometers in waters of these depths the 90-percent RMS currently used by NMFS should not be considered a conservative metric for establishing protective radii for mammalian hearing and behavioral response.
  3. The calculated sound exposure level weighted for LF Cetacean species is 198.8 dB re 1 μPa2 s. Pile driving sound exposures of 13 minutes at 500 meters, 45 minutes at 1000 meters, or 2 hours at 1800 meters, yields a cSEL exceeding the PTS threshold (onset of permanent hearing loss). A sound exposure of 2 minutes at 1200 meters, 5 minutes at 2200 meters, and 10 minutes at 3200 meters yields a cSEL exceeding the TTS threshold (temporary threshold shift, hearing impaired). It appears PTS exposure is possible for Cetaceans at significant distances.
  4. The calculated sound exposure level weighted for PW Phocid species (seals) is 178.3 dB re 1 μPa2 s. Pile driving sound exposures of 1-3/4 hours at 100 meters yields a cSEL exceeding the Level A PTS threshold (onset of permanent hearing loss). A pile driving sound exposure of 40 minutes at 500 meters, or 2 hours at 1 kilometer, yields a cSEL exceeding the TTS threshold (temporary threshold shift, hearing impaired).
  5. Propagation loss for Weighted SEL measured 16.5log(r) and 15.5log(r) for LF and PW weightings respectively. These propagation loss constants are consistent with practical spreading. Regulators assuming spherical spreading would underestimate sound exposure levels and resulting impacts including Level B and possibly Level A Harassment. Technical Report: Pile Driving Noise Survey, November 2, 2023
  6. Level A Harassment appears feasible depending on time periods occupied at various distances to the pile driving. Further assessment using unweighted SELs (from cautions in Southall 2019) finds much larger setbacks are needed. It is unclear that the mitigation methods set in place are adequate to protect the NARW and other ESA-listed mammals and marine species.
  7. The distance to the unweighted 160 dB,rms isopleth distance for Level B Harassment is 3355 meters, using the RMS,200ms time weighting for mammalian hearing (Madsen 2005). Whereas the IHA Authorization listed a distance of 2739 meters with 12 dB reduction.
  8. The IHA Application and Authorization omit noise impact assessment for exposure at each step between SPLs of 120-140, 140-160, and 160-180 dB listed in the BOEM Offshore Wind Energy Project Biological Assessment Method 2 (Wood 2012). Whereas weighted (LF) RMS
    sound levels compared to the BOEM step table show ninety percent of mysticetes responding (avoidance response) within 1 kilometer, and fifty percent respomding out to 14.5 km.
  9. The IHA Application and Authorization did not evaluate continuous vessel propulsion, DP thruster or combined noise levels by vessel operations in the lease area. The IHA documents including the Authorization treat the Orion and support vessels as silent. Ambient sound levels without pile driving were dominated by Orion and support vessel propulsion and thruster noise including cavitation, despite double bubble curtains surrounding the Orion. Orion and support vessel sound levels with pile driving off measured 127 dB RMS re 1uPa at 0.57 NM (1.06 km) and 123 dB RMS at 3.17 NM (5.87 km) from the Orion.
  10. NMFS appears to have abandoned evaluation of its Level B behavioral harassment threshold at 120 dB,rms which leaves insufficient protections in place for marine species behavioral harassment. To meet the NMFS 120 dB,rms behavioral harassment threshold for the operation’s continuous noise only, the distance required is estimated at over 6 km.
  11. The data acquired during the survey and subsequent review of project and regulator documents raise concerns of sufficient NOAA review methods and mitigation distances to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (NARW) and other marine species from behavioral harassment and hearing loss impacts from pile driving.
randacoustics_piledrivingnoisesurveyHerunterladen

Wind Industry’s Wanton Whale Slaughter Caused by Constant Deafening Construction Noise

From STOP THESE THINGS

Try as they might, the offshore wind industry can’t conceal the fact that their construction operations are killing hundreds of whales, dolphins, seals and much, much more.

The underwater cacophony created during offshore construction is laid out in Michael Shellenberger’s documentary Thrown To The Wind (see the video below) and this post: US Govt Lying About Offshore Wind Industry’s Whale Slaughter

Now, adding to the mounting body of inculpatory evidence, one of America’s top acousticians, Dr Rob Rand has been gathering underwater noise data that proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that the wind industry is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of marine mammals (and more) and that it continues to lie and deflect in the fashion we’ve come to expect from the most rotten and corrupt industry on earth. Donna Anderson provides the details below.

‘Environmental Pollutant’—How a Key Climate Agenda Tool Harms Endangered Species
The Epoch Times
Donna Anderson
27 April 2024

As the Biden administration expands its offshore wind projects as part of its goal to reach a carbon-free energy system, whales and other marine life may become collateral damage, according to new research.

Two independent studies measuring ocean wind turbine construction noise found that the sound emitted by vessels mapping the seafloor was significantly louder than estimated, and that noise protection for whales and other sea creatures during wind turbine pile driving doesn’t work.

Intense noise causes hearing loss in whales, other marine mammals, turtles, and fish, compromising their ability to navigate, avoid danger, detect predators, and find prey, according to scientific studies.

Robert Rand, an acoustics consultant with 44 years of experience, took underwater readings of the sonar survey vessel Miss Emma McCall off the coast of New Jersey. He also recorded acoustic readings of pile driving for Vineyards Wind 1, an offshore wind farm project under construction 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

In his pile-driving report, published March 28, Mr. Rand found that even the most advanced sound-dampening technologies didn’t adequately control harmful noise. The pounding was just as loud as seismic air gun arrays used for oil and gas exploration, long known to cause injury, hearing loss, and behavioral changes in fish and marine mammals.

Furthermore, the noise made by the construction vessel itself, which is not monitored, was almost as loud as the pile driving. Mr. Rand found that the standard formula used by the National Marine Fisheries Service to calculate how noise, over a period of time, affects a mammal’s hearing, significantly underestimates the sound levels experienced by dolphins and whales.

“These are real data,” Mr. Rand, who testified at a Congressional field hearing on January 20, told The Epoch Times. “I measured it. This is not a computer model. This is not a political press release. These are data.”

Many environmentalists fear that noise related to ocean wind farm construction is contributing to “unusual mortality events” affecting whales. From 2016 through April this year, 220 humpback whales have died, according to data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Elevated humpback whale mortalities have occurred along the Atlantic coast from Maine through Florida,” since 2016, the NOAA states.

The NOAA also reported an “unusual mortality event” for North Atlantic right whales, in which 126 have died since 2017.

“The numbers have been decreasing, especially since 2017, when offshore operations really swung into gear,” Mr. Rand said.

“From my experience in noise control, that’s not a coincidence. Noise is an environmental pollutant. In human terms, it’s measured in life years lost.”

The North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium estimates 350 North Atlantic right whales exist in the world’s oceans today.

Pile-Driving Noise
On Nov. 2, 2023, Mr. Rand went out on a 29-foot sport fishing boat to the Vineyard Wind 1 construction site.

The completed wind farm project will comprise 62 wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean, spaced one nautical mile apart. The project is estimated to provide power to more than 400,000 homes and businesses.

The offshore wind farm is owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners of Denmark and Avangrid Renewables, part of the Spanish company, Iberdrola.

At the construction site in November 2023, Mr. Rand said an 874-foot crane ship called the Orion was using a massive hammer to pound a monopile foundation for a wind turbine into the seabed.

The monopile is a steel pipe 31 feet in diameter, 279 feet long, and weighs 1,895 tons, according to the manufacturer, EEW Special Pipe Constructions.

Vineyard Wind 1 implemented two sets of noise controls. The first is a “hydro sound damper,” which Mr. Rand said, is a vertical net in the water around the monopile that’s covered with foam or rubber blocks and balls.

The second is a “double bubble” curtain. These are two weighted hoses lying on the seafloor in concentric circles around the monopile. The radius is roughly 492 to 656 feet.

The hoses have holes in them, and compressed air from a support vessel is forced through the hoses, causing bubbles to rise to the surface. The bubbles are supposed to mitigate the sound pressure created by the pile driving.

“These are advanced techniques,” Mr. Rand said. “They aren’t used anywhere else.”

Unfortunately, the noise mitigation techniques don’t work, he said.

Mr. Rand dropped a research-grade, omnidirectional hydrophone into the water at six locations, starting at 4.10 nautical miles from the pile driving and moving closer to 0.57 nautical miles.

Analyzing the data, Mr. Rand found that even with sophisticated noise mitigation in place, the pile driving is as loud as multiple seismic air guns.

“People have been protesting and the government has been rigorously regulating seismic air gun arrays for years, if not decades, because of their sonic intensity and hazard for endangered species—for whales and other marine species,” Mr. Rand said.

“This pile driving is as loud as an array of air guns.”

The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) makes it illegal to kill, hunt, capture, or harass a marine mammal. Killing or injuring a mammal is considered a Level A harassment under the 1972 law. Level B harassment includes actions that disrupt an animal’s normal behavior, including migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.

The National Marine Fisheries Service provides a guide to marine acoustic thresholds, which are considered harassment at certain levels.

“Acoustic thresholds refer to the levels of sound that, if exceeded, will likely result in temporary or permanent changes in marine mammal hearing sensitivity,” the website states.

The Fisheries Service notes that Level B harassment is reached when continuous noise, such as a ship engine running, hits 120 decibels, or impulsive or intermittent noise, such as pile driving, hits an average of 160 decibels.

The agency says marine mammals can suffer permanent hearing loss at 173 to 219 decibels of continuous sound, or 202 to 232 decibels of impulsive sound.

Based on his data, Mr. Rand estimated the pile driving noise at the source at 241 decibels. Loudness decreases as sound waves move away from the source. Still, Mr. Rand measured peak sound levels ranging from 180 decibels at a distance of 0.57 nautical miles from the ship to 162 decibels at 4.10 nautical miles.

He also found that the continuous noise of the Orion’s propulsion and positioning thrusters exceeded 120 decibels at a distance of 3.7 miles from the ship.

Why did the sound mitigation measures fail? Mr. Rand explained that sound waves travel through air, water, and land. In fact, sound travels nearly five times faster through water than air.

One likely reason why the hydro sound damper and double bubble curtain didn’t curb the noise is that they are designed to inhibit sound waves moving through water, Mr. Rand said. They have no effect on sound waves traveling through the seabed.

The formula the National Marine Fisheries Service uses to calculate how noise affects a mammal’s hearing is essentially 90 percent of average noise levels.

Mr. Rand used his data to perform the calculation. He found that the National Marine Fisheries Service formula underestimated the sound level experienced by whales, dolphins, and porpoises by as much as 6 decibels.

Six decibels means six times the sound energy.

“The metric is deficient,” Mr. Rand said.

Offshore wind construction ships are required to have spotters watching for marine mammals during pile driving and sonar surveys. If an animal swims too close to the ship, work must stop.

But, Mr. Rand says, because the National Marine Fisheries Service formula is off, the protective distance for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and other marine mammals is only half of what it should be.

“Everything looks earnest,” Mr. Rand said. “They’ve got the observers up on the deck. They’ve got the protective radii. They’ve got the fancy models. They’ve got all of this.

“But to me, as someone who’s worked in noise control planning for over four decades, it looks like smoke and mirrors.”

Sonar Noise
In his earlier study, published on Sept. 22, 2023, Mr. Rand measured actual noise levels generated by a sonar survey vessel. On May 8, 2023, the Miss Emma McCall was mapping the seafloor for Attentive Energy, LLC.

Attentive Energy won a bid from the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in February 2022 to lease 84,332 acres in the Atlantic Ocean, 47 miles off the coasts of New York and New Jersey.

Attentive Energy had contracts to supply power to both New Jersey and New York. Its contract for the New York project was canceled on April 19. The New Jersey contract is still in place.

The Miss Emma McCall used equipment including a multibeam echosounder, side scan sonar, and a sub-bottom profiler, or “sparker,” to reveal geological features of the seabed.

The sparker sends an acoustical pulse to the ocean floor that is reflected back to a receiver. Based on the data collected, Mr. Rand estimated the sparker source sound level at 224 decibels, and peak sound levels at 151.6 decibels at one-half nautical mile away.

This was consistent with the sparker’s manufacturer specifications, but louder than what the vessel stated it would generate in its permit application for incidental marine mammal harassment.

The vessel itself created continuous noise, which Mr. Rand measured at 126.5 decibels at one-half nautical mile away. But as with the pile driving ship, the permit application treated the vessel as if it were silent.

Mr. Rand reiterated that any continuous noise above 120 decibels is considered Level B harassment.

To protect marine mammals, the Miss Emma McCall was obligated to shut down the sonar survey if a North Atlantic right whale came within 500 meters (1,640 feet) of the ship, if endangered marine mammals came within 100 meters (328 feet), or if non-endangered marine mammals came within 50 meters (164 feet).

But, Mr. Rand said, based on his data and calculations, the sonar survey should shut down if the mammals came within one nautical mile (1.1 miles) of the ship.

He says the National Marine Fisheries Service “appears to have abandoned the evaluation of Level B behavioral harassment at 120 decibels.”

“Level A harassment due to cumulative sound exposure level appears feasible depending on time periods occupied and various distances to the sparker,” Mr. Rand wrote in his report

“It is unclear that the mitigation methods set in place are adequate to protect the North Atlantic right whale and other Endangered Species Act-listed mammals and marine species.”

Federal Agency Responsibilities
The damage intense noise causes in mammals is noted in several scientific studies.

A Duke University study published on Science Daily, found that when ship traffic in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, decreased after Sept. 11, 2001, underwater noise decreased by six decibels. This correlated with lower stress levels in whales, suggesting that low-frequency ship noise may be associated with chronic stress in whales.

Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that turtles exposed to excess underwater noise can experience temporary hearing loss.

The Ecological Society of America published a study showing that squid, octopus, and cuttlefish exposed to excessive low frequency sound had severe lesions in their auditory structures, indicating “massive acoustical trauma.”

To protect marine mammals from the risk of auditory injury and behavioral harassment, Mr. Rand believes federal agencies such as the National Marine Fisheries Service, which sits within NOAA, should increase protective distances around offshore wind construction sites.

“I think NOAA should uphold the Marine Mammals Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act,” Mr. Rand said. “I think they strayed away from their legal requirements established by Congress.

“What I’m seeing is a relaxation of protections. And it’s very subtle because there’s so much apparent concern about the modeling and the calculations and the research on what is an appropriate level to be used for a threshold.”

The Epoch Times requested comments from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, NOAA, and Attentive Energy. They did not respond by press time.
The Epoch Times

Eagles, bats, whales, and others need protection from wind turbines

From CFACT

By Duggan Flanakin

Eagles, bats, whales, and multiple other species are suffering and dying from wind turbine blades, pilings, and cables – and more. Surely, they want to stop the slaughter. We do.

Chinese Uighurs, too, would likely love to vote in the November U.S. elections. Like many Congolese children, they, too, are suffering and dying to satisfy the egos and half-truths of the climate cabal. The children, of course, are way too young to vote.

Much has been written about the downsides of offshore and onshore wind turbines, from noise pollution to the major problem of disposing of used turbine blades. But nothing has shaken the determination of the Biden Administration – and the wind industry – to continue to subsidize and fast-track their permitting despite rising opposition.

One might ask why.

And yet, the answer must be obvious. The windbags have committed to wind at any price (they get others to pay) and cannot back away now without losing their investments in both wind and wind politics.

The chief federal proponent of offshore wind is the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), created in 2010 by Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his research into the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light.

One of Chu’s bright ideas is a “global glucose economy,” in which glucose and cellulose from tropical plants would be turned into biofuels and bioplastics. The theory is that glucose fuels would burn clean and produce few chemical byproducts, while glucose bioplastics would be eco-friendly – unlike today’s plastics, which end up in landfills.

Very little of the United States is amenable to growing “tropical plants,” hence such an economy would be built either via neocolonialist seizure of massive acreages or the repurposing of even more land now used for growing food for the world’s seven billion people. This land would likely be in sub-Saharan Africa, southeast Asia, and Central and South America (the Amazon?).

Such an economy might save the lives of whales, bats, and eagles – and it might not even require the massive subsidies that have “fueled” the wind and, solar and electric vehicle industries. One writer suggests that a combination of biological processes, computer-assisted design, and human intelligence (aided by artificial intelligence?) could trigger a revolution in manufacturing and construction.

Wind turbines, by contrast, are built with steel, concrete, and (well) today’s plastics. They also have a fairly short lifespan (far shorter than that of oil rigs), as do solar panels (which, as many recently learned, are subject to damage from hail and other forces of nature). Electric vehicle batteries are massive and today depend on intensive mining operations conducted by virtual slaves and actual children.

The BOEM itself is a twin offspring of the old Minerals Management Service, with the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) as its mirror image.

One might think that the BSEE, “America’s lead agency charged with advancing safety, environmental protection, and conserving natural resources related to energy development on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf,” would find objectionable the near-extinction of right whales and the deaths of many humpback whales.

One might think that the massive concrete foundations and the disturbance of the ocean floor all the way to the surface during construction would violate the principles of “environmental protection,” or at least of “conserving” the natural resources upon which fishermen, lobstermen, and other seafaring industries rely for their livelihoods and those who eat fish and seafood.

One might even think that the agency concerned with “safety” might even find that offshore giant turbines could pose safety issues for mariners and marine life as well.

But who’s kidding? Whales, fishermen, lobstermen, recreational boaters, and even oceangoing vessels do not have the deep (subsidized) pockets of those giant corporations investing in offshore wind. And the Biden Administration, via the misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022,” is prioritizing offshore wind leasing despite local and conservationist opposition.

The Biden commitment to giant wind is such that it granted a waiver on development fees for the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project offshore Massachusetts, the first in the U.S. to deliver electricity to the grid. According to uncovered internal documents, Vineyard would likely have not been completed had not the BOEM waived the fees intended to protect taxpayers.

The waiver means that Vineyard has 15 years after startup of operations to begin paying the development fee – sans 15 years of accrued interest. This is despite a federal statute that mandates developers pay these hefty fees (though not nearly as high as those for nuclear projects) prior to construction. The fees are designed to guarantee that the property is returned to its original state after a lessee departs its lease – for example, should Vineyard Wind prove unprofitable.

Does anyone remember the $600 million boondoggle that was Solyndra?

The Biden windbag juggernaut suffered a body blow in January when Equinor and BP announced the cancellation of a contract for the proposed Empire Wind 2 project. The companies and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority agreed on the termination of the project. Equinor and BP blamed inflation, interest rates, and supply chain disruptions for making the project no longer viable.

While the smaller Empire Wind 1, hailed as a success of “Bidenomics,” was approved last November, its own viability may be questionable given the demise of its big sister. The Danish energy company Ørsted had just weeks earlier canceled its Ocean Wind 1 and 2 twin projects, planned for offshore New Jersey, also because of “negative economic conditions,” specifically, inflation, interest rates, and supply chain disruptions.

Fancy that! Inflation Reduction Act projects being canceled because of inflation!

Despite these giant wind collapses, Dominion Energy is preparing to place and drive 178 monopiles into the Atlantic Ocean for a huge offshore wind facility offshore Virginia Beach while challenging a lawsuit filed on behalf of right whales to stop the habitat destruction.

The plaintiffs won a brief reprieve based on evidence that Dominion lacked authorization from the National Marine Fisheries Service to allow its dynamic positioning thrusters to exceed NOAA’s harassment threshold established under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Dominion had already been granted NMFS authorization to “harass” up to 80,000 marine animals while conducting pile driving and sonar surveys.

The chicanery was even worse in the Great Lakes, where the developer of the proposed Icebreaker wind project reportedly failed to present a reasonable proposal to protect wildlife or the quality of lake water from lubricating oils.

True environmental non-protection!

Another report says the oft-vaunted Swedish wind industry is facing a total financial collapse, with company losses from 19% to 90% of turnover “because the industry cannot produce electricity at a cost below the market price despite extensive subsidies.”

Yet the Biden Administration plows ahead, unfazed by economic realities.

Odd, is it not, that the same administration that has blocked multiple onshore mining permits, revoked oil and gas leases, and demanded protection for not-so-endangered species is so bent on wind energy projects that it is willing for the right whale to join the passenger pigeon in extinction?

With neither energy nor environmental protection as legitimate rationales, one has to wonder about the true motives for pushing offshore wind.

A version of this article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Offshore Wind Industry Targets Australian Coastline For Wholesale Whale Slaughter

From STOP THESE THINGS

The ultra-high-decibel sonar emitted by wind industry survey vessels during wind farm construction deafens marine mammals, so does piledriving: the repetitive, percussive pounding of the columns that support the turbines (see above); the piles are 8m in diameter and over 100m long – 30-60m of which gets punched into the seabed.

The offshore wind industry is killing whales and other marine mammals by a variety of means, including collisions with boat traffic in areas where there previously was none. Whales and other marine mammals – deafened in the manner described above – become disorientated, calves become separated from their mothers and prone to fatal or mortal collisions with surface vessels – particularly those used in the construction of offshore turbines, cabling and other infrastructure.

Further, confused and disorientated whales are driven away from their natural feeding grounds by the noise generated underwater by sonic mapping and turbine construction and into areas where food is scarce, leaving them hungry, prone to disease, and liable to end up beached in shallow water.

The wind industry has been killing an increasing number of whales, dolphins and porpoises all along America’s Atlantic coast for years now – and doing so with complete impunity, thanks to US Federal government authorisations euphemistically called the ‘Incidental Harassment Authorization’.

The underwater cacophony created during offshore construction is laid out in Michael Shellenberger’s documentary Thrown To The Wind (see the video below) and this post: US Govt Lying About Offshore Wind Industry’s Whale Slaughter

Now the wind industry wants to repeat the slaughter in Australia, targeting its southern coastline, including the south-west coast of Western Australia and Victoria where, as detailed in the 2nd article, local Aboriginal groups are furious about the damage the proposed offshore wind industry will cause to whales and other marine mammals.

Federal government proposes wind farm in the middle of a whale migration route
News.com
Emma Kirk
9 April 2024

In what is believed to be a world first, the federal government has proposed developing an offshore wind farm in the middle of a whale super highway off Western Australia’s southwest coast.

Each year, tens of thousands of whales use the water in and around Geographe Bay on their annual migration to Antarctica.

The bay is described as a pristine marine ecosystem off Bunbury, about 168km south of Perth, and stretches 98km along the coastline to Cape Naturaliste, between Dunsborough and Yallingup.

The area is one of WA’s most popular tourist destinations and recreational playgrounds, with endless sandy beaches, turquoise waters and an abundance of marine life.

More than 30,000 humpback whales pass through Geographe Bay on their way south as they head towards their feeding grounds.

Endangered southern right whales use the bay to rest and nurse their calves.

The community is in disbelief that an offshore wind farm has been proposed in Geographe Bay and say there has been a lack of information and consultation from authorities.

Geographe Marine Research have monitored the movement of whales through the bay for years and believe a wind farm would be better located on land.

They recently started tagging blue whales in the area and have recorded whales outside the bay area using an acoustic data log, inside the proposed wind farm zone.

Geographe Bay Marine research board member Rodney Peterson said their concern was that the wind farm would be the world’s first in a whale migration route.

“No one can predict how the whales will react to that,” he said.

“It wasn’t that long ago that we nearly wiped whales off the planet.

“The blue whales and southern right populations haven’t come back like the humpbacks.

“We need to see more details about the wind farm and the area that is being proposed.

“The government has not come forward with any details and that is what’s lacking.

“They just need to come forward with research to show why this is a good area, although if they did the research, they would probably find it is not a good area.

“We nearly killed all these whales now we are going to do this to their migration path.”

In February, the federal government started seeking community feedback on the proposed wind farm area, which could span about 7674 sqkm

While the project is still in the early stages, if the area is approved by the federal and state governments, it could be located 20km to 70km off the populated coastline.

One of the proponents looking at the project is Copenhagen Energy, a Danish renewable energy developer, which is looking at up to 200 wind turbines operating in the proposed area.

Copenhagen Energy has submitted an application to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water based on their initial environmental, social and economic studies.

A self-proclaimed ocean rat and fourth generation diver Kyle Treloar said he “just loved the water” and shed a tear when he learnt about the proposed wind farm.

He started a group called Save Our Beloved Geographe Bay for the community to share information about the wind farm and images from beneath the sea because many people were unaware of the marine life that lived there.

“Some people are absolutely terrified, it is a way of life, it is business and tourism,” he said.

“We still shake our heads that this is a thing.

“I don’t know how you can put industrialisation over a pristine ecosystem the last thing we need is big spinning structures.”

Mr Treloar has been mapping the underwater environment to give people a better perspective of the marine ecosystem off the coast.

He said they had picked the biggest reef and coral system south of Mandurah.

“The government is willing to risk all this for something that benefits industry,” he said.

“The turbines proposed are 280m tall and 20km away, they have to put the turbines straight over the coral which has a lot of people upset.

“They have done no environmental impact (study), they just picked an area and haven’t looked at what’s at stake.

“When you talk about people’s recreational activities, the thought of losing that is diabolic.”

WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam said she shared community concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding the project and believed the consultation process so far has raised more questions than answers.

“The offshore wind farms will have a profound effect on our beautiful coastline and yet there are still many unanswered questions about the full impact it will have on the health and wellbeing of residents living in nearby coastal communities but also on whales, migratory birds and our fish stock,” she said.

“The recent community consultation sessions provided no constructive information or reassurance.

“Residents deserve open and transparent information about the impact of the project and it is not unreasonable to expect the federal government to be able to provide details by this stage of the planning process.

“I have met with southwest locals who are understandably outraged by the process so far, and I will continue to work alongside them to ensure this proposal does not go ahead.”
News.com

‘Undermines our sovereignty’: Custodians speak out against wind farm zone
The Standard
Jessica Greenan
7 April 2024

The custodians of an area of sea country marked as an offshore wind farm zone off the south-west coast say the decision has shown “disregard for our voices”.

It comes as both the Gunditj Mirring and Eastern Maar Aboriginal corporations expressed their disappointment at the announcement made by Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen on March 6.

In a statement, Gunditj Mirring said there’d been a “complete lack of appropriate and meaningful consultation between the commonwealth government and the Gunditjmara community”.

“By excluding us from the decision-making process, the government has not only demonstrated a disregard for our voices, perspectives and rights, it has overlooked an opportunity to engage and learn the true value and history of our sea country from its traditional owners,” it said.

“Whilst GMTOAC supports the agenda for environmental protection and climate change, this decision undermines our sovereignty as land rights holders.”

The statement said the corporation had written two letters and a submission opposing the designated area and had highlighted the need for further independent research to assess the cultural and environmental impacts of such a designation.

Eastern Maar Aboriginal Corporation said in a statement it supported decarbonising traditional energy sources and understood the critical role it played in combating climate change.

“However we firmly believe that the pursuit of decarbonisation must not come at the expense of marine life that we are inextricably linked to,” it said.

The statement said the corporation had concerns about the impacts on the migratory paths, feeding grounds and nursery areas of the “highly endangered and culturally significant Koontapool (Southern Right whale) species that utilise the oceans and coastlines of south-west Victoria, as well as the globally significant ecosystems that support Koontapool”.

The statement said the declared area was made on the back of preliminary assessments rather than comprehensive environmental studies which was “concerning”.

“We believe that the environmental studies should not have been completed before the declaration of the area not at stage five as per the eight-stage process.”

It said the declaration should have been more comprehensive and the process of declaration should have deployed the services and involved the independent offshore regulator NOPSEMA (National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority).

Federal member for Wannon Dan Tehan said it was “beggars belief” Energy Minister Chris Bowen had not done the appropriate consultation with Gunditj Mirring.

“Given this failure to consult he should immediately rip up the declared zone and start the process again,” he said.”
The Standard

You can sign your name to a petition to the Parliament of Australia to stop all offshore wind turbine proposals and construction here (closes 20 May 2024)
https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN6098/sign

Saving whales started as a left-wing cause, but now conservatives are taking up the fight

From CFACT

By Kevin Killough:

Saving the whales was once a leading cause of left-wing environmental groups like Greenpeace. But offshore wind development has created an ironic twist in which conservative groups are now the loudest voices raising concerns about the North Atlantic right whale’s extinction.

The Heartland Institute, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the National Legal and Policy Center, want to draw attention to what they say is a connection between an increase in dead whales along the East Coast and industrialization of the U.S. Coast. A new study by an independent acoustician concludes that they may be right.

Off the shores of the East Coast are plans for the development of massive amounts of offshore wind farms. Among them is Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, which is expected to be the largest offshore wind farm in the world.

Last month, a coalition of conservative groups filed a lawsuit against federal agencies, their top officials, and Dominion Energy, arguing the permits didn’t properly assess the danger the project presents to whales. The same groups Tuesday submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for Dominion’s species protection plan, which they said isn’t publicly available.

Greenpeace, whose first campaign in 1973 was aimed at stopping whaling, insists that concerns about the impacts to whales from extensive offshore wind developments spreading up the East and soon the West Coast are nothing more than “right-wing disinformation,” and media outlets like the Associated Press and The Guardian report these concerns as “unfounded” and “false.”

Both the Associated Press and the Guardian have received funding from anti-fossil fuel groups in support of their reporting on climate and the environment.

Dominion spokesperson Jeremy Slayton told public broadcaster WHRO that the coalition’s lawsuit has no merits. He said that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has done a thorough review of the potential impacts to marine wildlife and the environment from the company’s project.

“The overwhelming consensus of federal agencies and scientific organizations is that offshore wind does not adversely impact marine life,” Slayton told WHRO.

Dr. David Wojick, policy advisor for CFACT, told Just The News he couldn’t believe the company’s statement. “I use the word ‘absurd,’ but ‘preposterous’ is probably the right word,” Wojick said.

Dominion received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration the authorization to “harass”– in limited terms — 80,000 animals over the next five years. Under federal law, offshore wind developers have to get permits, called incidental harassment authorization, to conduct activities that might threaten marine animals.

There are two types of harassment under federal law — Level A and Level B. Level A has the “potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild” and Level B has the same potential but could cause injury. Activities that cause these impacts are illegal, without the authorizations.

“If you chase a whale or a dolphin with your boat, they’ll take your boat,” Wojick said.

New research

Robert Rand, founder of the acoustics consultancy company Rand Acoustics, is trying to draw attention to what his research is showing — there is a lack of adequate protections for the whales that migrate along this corridor where all these projects are going up.

He told Just The News he gets little in the way of response from federal agencies that are overseeing the permitting for these projects.

Last year, after increases in the number of whale deaths threatened to drive the North Atlantic right whale into extinction, Rand produced an independent investigation of underwater noise levels from sonar survey vessels, which map the ocean floor for the planning of the projects.

Rand’s study found that the incidental harassment authorizations don’t impose sufficient mitigation requirements to protect marine animals. He sent the findings off to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). He said he never received any response.

His latest study surveyed the noise from pile driving, which is when developers drive a giant steel monopile into the seabed by pounding on it. He took sound measurements as the 5000-pound, 700-foot long pile-driving vessel Orion was driving monopiles into seabed off the coasts of Nantucket Island for the Vineyard Wind project.

Rand’s conclusions suggest federal agencies are underestimating the impact to whales from offshore wind development. “This investigation discovered a substantial underestimation of both impulsive and continuous noise levels by current regulatory standards, suggesting that the actual exposure to harmful noise levels from pile driving for marine mammals like the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale is substantially greater than NMFS [National Marine Fisheries Service] acknowledges in its existing protective measures,” Rand wrote in his report.

Wojick, who wasn’t involved in Rand’s research, said that the implication here is that the 80,000 estimation of “harassed” marine animals that Dominion is permitted for is likely a way too low.

Vessel collision

A humpback whale washed up dead Thursday on the shores of New Jersey’s Long Island Beach, Fox News reported. It was the first of 2024 in New Jersey, following 14 whale deaths in the state in 2023.

In a post on X, SaveLBI, a nonprofit coalition raising concerns about what they say are negative impacts of offshore wind development, reported a Dwarf Sperm found dead on April 4 on the beach of Sullivan’s Island in South Carolina. They estimate the tally of dead whales since December 2022 is approaching 100.

Bob Stern, president of SaveLBI, in a separate post on X, called for a moratorium on offshore wind development in order for more research into the impacts of the industry to be conducted.

“These continuing whale deaths unfortunately confirm our analysis of the significant expected impact on marine mammals from the noise from these projects, starting with the vessel surveys, through the pile driving of foundations and with the higher operational noise from these larger turbines,” Stern said.

Wojick said offshore wind proponents exploit the indirect way in which offshore wind development kills whales to say the two are unrelated.

In its environmental impact statement for a wind project off the shores of New Jersey, BOEM explained, “It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness…. The potential for biologically significant effects is expected to increase with the number of pile-driving events to which an individual is exposed.”

Wojick said that the projects are built, for obvious reasons, outside shipping lanes, which also happen to be the whales’ migration corridors. So, the whales impacted by pile-driving and other construction noise are going to swim to the east, where they encounter a busy shipping lane called the M-95, or they go to the west, where they encounter coastal barge traffic. He said both are deadly.

Demonstrating that a whale died when it was struck by a vessel as a result of avoiding sonar vessels or pile-driving activity is very difficult, Wojick said. As an analogy, he uses the example of a dog getting hit by a car after running into traffic to escape a firecracker thrown at it. The car killed the dog, but it was the firecracker that ultimately led to the animal’s death, and nothing about the animal’s injuries would point to the firecracker.

According to data from NOAA Fisheries in 2015, 33 whales were found dead on the beaches between North Carolina and Maine. The following year, the number jumped to 54, and in 2017, 89 whales were found dead. The numbers then began to decline, falling to a record low of 24 in 2022. Then, in the first six months of 2023, 48 whales were found dead along the Atlantic Coast. There are an estimated 360 right whales remaining.

Lisa Linowes, co-founder of the Save Right Whales Coalition, told Just The News in October that 2016 was when sonar vessels began mapping out the lease areas off the East Coast in preparation for the buildout of wind farms.

The Biden administration has approved eight major offshore wind projects as part of President Joe Biden’s goal of producing 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030.

The conservative coalition’s lawsuit argues that the Biological Opinion issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to adequately analyze the impacts of Dominion’s project on the endangered whales, and they are asking the court to set it aside and order a halt to work on the project.

With the media, the offshore wind industry and environmental groups denying any impacts to whales from offshore wind, it may be conservatives and independent researchers like Rand who end up saving the whales.

This article originally appeared at Pennsylvania Daily Star

NAS study raises concern over offshore wind harming endangered whales

By David Wojick

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) released a lengthy report on what is known as the “dead ocean” threat with a focus on the Nantucket region, specifically what are called the Nantucket shoals. This is a major feeding ground of the desperately endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. It is really a good case study for all major offshore wind installations.

The report uncovers something strange but true. The physics is technical, but the basic idea is simple. Wind turbines take a lot of the energy out of the air, creating a lower energy wake behind the wind turbine facility. Lower energy wind causes lower energy waves so there is much less mixing in the ocean surface layer. This depletes the oxygen level in the water, which can reduce the amount of living food sources that whales eat, which can harm the whales on a population level. This is why it is called the dead ocean effect.

The primary threat arises because the world’s biggest animals feed on the world’s smallest animals. Fifteen-ton Right Whales feed on what is called zooplankton, which are microscopic animals of various sorts. That these huge marine mammals can filter out and live on tons of almost invisible animals is a natural miracle in itself.

The dead ocean threat, to be even more specific, is that the reduced energy in hundreds of wind turbine wakes combined can greatly reduce the zooplankton population. This could lead to malnutrition or even starvation in the whales. It can also require the whales to do a lot more hunting for their food, which can also cause them harm. This is especially true if it increases the risk of ship strikes and fishing gear entanglements, the leading causes of whale deaths.

In fact, there are at least two very different wake effects that adversely affect whales. Note that the term wake effect often refers to the fact that the turbine sucks out roughly 50% of the energy in the air, so turbines have to be spaced far apart in the wind direction lest the first turbine rob the second of energy.

This energy-sucking effect can cause a reduction in mixing wave action far behind the turbines, which lowers the oxygen content of the water, which lowers the biological productivity, which lowers the whales’ food supply.

The second adverse effect has an opposite cause. The huge turbine blades create close in turbulence downwind, which stirs up the sediment, creating a suspended sediment plume that can be large and long-lasting. This opaque plume would certainly decrease biological activity. The lack of mixing would tend to prolong the plume. Moreover, turbulence takes energy, which further reduces downwind mixing.

What is most interesting is that these two adverse effects might cause the whales to avoid the area, like harassment does, pushing them into more dangerous waters. Thus, in addition to harassment, we now have simple avoidance as a potential cause of death.

Nantucket shoals is just East, that is, downwind, of nine major offshore wind lease areas. If these areas are developed as planned, it will create a wall of hundreds of enormous wind-sucking turbines. Each turbine removes roughly half of the energy from the wind that drives it. The stronger the wind, the more energy gets drawn out.

The primary conclusion of the NAS report is starkly simple: While the risk is clear, nothing is known about its magnitude. This is said repeatedly in carefully couched, highly technical, and very scientific language. There are numerous good recommendations that lay out the need for a research program that is sorely needed in order to understand the threat posed by offshore wind.

Here is a central conclusion from the NAS Report: “Given the state of understanding of the effects of hydrodynamics on zooplankton supply, abundance, and aggregation, as well as uncertainties regarding how turbines will affect the hydrodynamics of the Nantucket Shoals region, it is unclear how wind development will affect right whale prey availability in this region. There are mechanisms that could support an increase, a decrease, or no measurable change in right whale prey availability. Future research supporting observational studies and model development are needed to support accurate predictions.”

Of particular interest is the recommendation for the first two Atlantic wind facilities, presently under construction, to be heavily instrumented so as to measure their wake effect. These are South Fork and Vineyard Wind, both in the Nantucket area. Of course, it will take several years to get good data.

Oddly, the one NAS recommendation that is conspicuously missing is that construction of new major wind facilities be put on hold until this serious threat to endangered whales is better understood. This is not surprising given that NAS has also just released a report espousing the “accelerating decarbonization” of the US economy.

NAS is devoutly on board the alarmist climate change bandwagon, so their idea of how to research potential threats to marine life is the same as the Biden Administration’s: namely, first to build monster wind facilities, then assess the damage they inflict on the environment somewhere down the road.  Actually, preventing damage before it occurs, including the extinction of the Right Whale, is not part of the plan.

Given this recent NAS study detailing the clear and present danger to the already desperately endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, let’s hope cooler heads prevail.  The proper course of action is to put this research ahead of any more offshore wind construction, not after it.

The post NAS study raises concern over offshore wind harming endangered whales appeared first on CFACT.

Coalition Files Notice of Intent to Sue Federal Agencies to Stop Whale-killing Virginia Wind Project

From Watts Up With That?

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Marine Fisheries Service have violated federal law by finding that the Virginia Offshore Wind project will not result in the destruction of the North Atlantic right whale as a species 

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (November 14, 2023) — The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) announced today that they are filing with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) a 60 Day Notice of Intent to Sue letter for a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The violation is contained in a defective “biological opinion,” which authorizes the construction of the Virginia Offshore Wind Project (VOW). 

The 60 Day Notice is required by the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for parties who wish to commence litigation against BOEM for failure to provide adequate protection of the North Atlantic right whale and other endangered species. The North Atlantic right whale is listed as “critically endangered” by governments of both the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States. Numerous studies by federal and environmental organizations have found that only about 350 North Atlantic right whales remain in existence.

CFACT and The Heartland Institute assert that the Biological Opinion issued by the NMFS fails to consider the cumulative impact of the entire East Coast offshore wind program ordered by the Biden administration, and ignores the “best scientific information available” about the endangered population of the North Atlantic right whale. The biological opinion found that the VOW would not cause a single death of that species of whale over its 30-year projected lifetime — although it did acknowledge the wind project could result in Level B harassment. That level could, according to NMFS, result in indirect death, requiring the need for a “take” permit, which authorizes the “harassment” and potential killing of the North Atlantic right whale.

“We need to send a message to BOEM and NMFS that there will be legal consequences if they violate legal requirements for protection of the North Atlantic Right Whale,” said H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute. “The Biden administration’s plan to industrialize the ocean along the East Coast must follow the law, and we will intervene, if necessary, to make sure that the North Atlantic right whale continues to exist as a species.”

“This letter officially puts BOEM on notice that CFACT is prepared to file suit in order to expose the agency’s clear violation of federal law in failing to protect the North Atlantic right whale,” said Craig Rucker, president of CFACT. “By refusing to consider the cumulative impact of the dozens of industrial offshore wind facilities, consisting of several thousand individual turbines planned for the East Coast, it adopted a piecemeal approach, which only considered each individual offshore wind project in isolation. This is clearly a ploy to artificially reduce the total impact of these projects on the North Atlantic Right Whale. This obvious violation of federal law was ignored by the oversight agencies but will not be tolerated by the courts.”

“BOEM has admitted that it produced noise control regulations for the North Atlantic right whale that were based on guesswork — not on the ‘best available science’ — as required by law,” said Collister Johnson, senior policy adviser for CFACT. “They have funded ongoing studies that will finally produce information necessary to determine the noise impacts of offshore wind factories on baleen whales, such as the North Atlantic right whale. The results will not be available until 2025, at the earliest. This is a further violation of federal law, in addition to ignoring the cumulative impacts.

“There is a reason why Dominion Energy’s stock price has declined by 50 percent over the past year,” Johnson added. “Investors know that Dominion’s wind project is a costly, risky gamble that has already driven most other East Coast wind developers to either renegotiate their utility contracts or abandon their projects altogether. If Dominion decided tomorrow to abandon this project, as it should, its stock price would improve dramatically, and a huge financial cloud hanging over its future would be removed.”

The 60-day notice letter instructs the federal government agencies to take corrective action to remedy the alleged violations. If no corrective action is taken, the signatories of the letter are allowed to seek relief through the courts. The most likely venue for this litigation would be the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 

The firm of Gatzke, Dillon and Ballance has filed the letter as counsel for the CFACT and The Heartland Institute. The firm is currently representing plaintiffs in ongoing litigation against BOEM and NMFS, who are opposing construction offshore wind projects in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.

Earlier this year, more than two dozen large dead whales washed up on the shores of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, directly following 11 offshore sonar mapping activities conducted by wind developers. These “site characterization” studies use high-powered sonar pulses to determine the proper areas for placing the wind turbines. Sonar mapping has been found to interfere with the hearing capabilities of marine mammals. Environmental groups have successfully sued the Navy to restrict sonar mapping being conducted in the Pacific Ocean.

The 60-day notice adds to the risks faced by Dominion Energy as it attempts to build an offshore wind generation facility that would be the largest such project of its kind in the world. Siemens Energy, which has been designated by Dominion as the supplier of the huge 14MW turbines for the project, recently announced a write down of €2.4 billion for the 3rd quarter, leading to an annual loss of €4.5 Billion, due to costly mechanical failures in its new wind turbines. The company has said its turbine failures are a “quality issue” which “will take years to fix.”

Measured in megawatts, some 80 percent of the proposed East Coast wind projects have either been abandoned or are in the process of trying to renegotiate their power purchase agreements.

The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems.

CFACT is a national non-profit organization founded in 1985 and based in Washington DC which believes that the power of markets and safe, proven technologies can offer humanity practical solutions to the world’s most pressing concerns.

CFACT issues “intent to sue” over offshore wind, releases new study

CFACT is not just talking about the tragic mistake of offshore wind, we are taking action.

This week CFACT, partnering with The Heartland Institute, filed their joint intent to bring a lawsuit against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for abrogating their responsibility to protect the endangered Right Whale from the rush to construct wind turbines.

As we state in our press release, “The North Atlantic right whale is listed as ‘critically endangered’ by the governments of both the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States. Numerous studies by federal and environmental organizations have found that only about 350 North Atlantic right whales remain in existence.”

Unprecedented numbers of whales have been found dead along our coasts as wind turbine construction proceeds.  BOEM released its “biological opinion,” giving Dominion Energy a green light to proceed with building its 2,600 MW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project 27 miles off Virginia Beach. This biological opinion has numerous pitfalls, including a failure to rely upon the “best available science” and employing a piecemeal approach to assessing risk to marine mammals that minimizes their actual lethality.

If bureaucrats refuse to do their jobs, we aim to force them!

To make matters worse, the Biden Administration’s energy strategy is terribly misguided in claiming offshore wind will meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  CFACT released a study this week which concludes, among other things, that “the net ‘carbon’ (carbon dioxide) reduction effects of offshore wind development are hugely negative and cannot justify further investments in this industry.”

You can read the entire study by David Wojick, Ph.D., and CFACT senior policy advisor Paul Driessen at CFACT.org.

The verdict is in regarding offshore wind. When one considers the incredible costs, its threat to the power grid, and the potentially severe threat to marine life, the way forward is simple…

Stop building offshore wind.

Read CFACT’s wind turbine study here

Wojick-Driessen-How-Offshore-Wind-Drives-Up-Global-Carbon-Emissions-FINALHerunterladen

Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

The post CFACT issues “intent to sue” over offshore wind, releases new study appeared first on CFACT.

Wind Blows: Excellent news for ratepayers, birds, bats, landscapes, and whales as offshore and onshore wind projects get scuttled

Dead whales keep washing up on the US Atlantic coast. While radical climate activists like Extinction Rebellion insist that their motivations are selfless, their advocacy of a technology that threatens the hoary bat and golden eagle with extinction betrays something closer to the opposite.

From Substack

By Robert Bryce

A critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and calf. Photo credit: NOAA.

The only thing dumber than onshore wind energy is offshore wind energy. The good news for ratepayers, taxpayers, birds, bats, landscapes, viewsheds, and the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, is that both sectors are getting hammered by market forces that make their projects uneconomic.

On Monday, Avangrid, a subsidiary of the Spanish utility Iberdrola,  announced that it was abandoning the 804-megawatt Park City Wind project offshore Connecticut because the project was “unfinanceable.” In a statement that includes a marvelous but unintended pun, the company blamed:

Unprecedented economic headwinds facing the industry including record inflation, supply chain disruptions, and sharp interest rate hikes, the aggregate impact of which rendered the Park City Wind project unfinanceable under its existing contracts.

Avangrid will pay a $16 million penalty to cancel the contract to sell electricity from the offshore wind project to Connecticut. The move is the latest blow to the Biden Administration’s plans to construct 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind on the East Coast over the next several years. In August, Shell and Ocean Winds North America agreed to pay $60 million to cancel contracts to sell power to Massachusetts from the proposed 2,400-megawatt SouthCoast Wind project. In July, Avangrid agreed to pay $48 million to cancel its contract with Massachusetts to sell power from the proposed 1,200-megawatt Commonwealth Wind project. Also in July, Rhode Island Energy announced it was canceling a power purchase agreement with Ørsted and Eversource on the 884-megawatt Revolution Wind project because the power from the offshore facility was too “too expensive for customers to bear.”

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This news shouldn’t be surprising. Offshore wind energy has always been insanely expensive. Indeed, the only method of generating power that’s more expensive than offshore wind is by burning currency in a power plant’s boiler. One of the main reasons offshore wind is so expensive (aside from the corrosive effects of salt water) is its high resource intensity. As I noted in my August 13 Substack, “The Power Of Power Density,” offshore wind requires vast amounts of copper, manganese, zinc, and other critical metals and minerals.

Although the companies developing offshore wind on the East Coast claim that they will rebid the projects sometime in the future, that’s not certain. In August, Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that the cost of producing electricity from offshore wind has soared over the past two years:

The levelized cost of electricity of a subsidized US offshore wind project has increased to $114.20 per megawatt-hour in 2023, up almost 50% from 2021 levels in nominal terms, according to BloombergNEF calculations. Increases in capex and opex have added $16.90/MWh to the LCOE. The higher cost of capital, thanks to interest rate hikes, has increased levelized costs by another $27.20/MWh, assuming project owners continue to expect to make a 5-percentage-point premium over their cost of debt.

Further, BNEF pointed out that even “a 40% investment tax credit benefit” due to the Inflation Reduction Act will only help “offset a minor share of these cost increases.” The article included the graphic below on the soaring cost of capital.

The cancellations of these offshore wind projects are welcome news for conservationists and commercial fishermen, who have been fighting offshore wind plans for years. About five dozen whales have washed ashore on the East Coast this year alone. Those whale deaths have coincided with the increased boat activity and high-decibel sonar mapping in the region being performed by offshore wind developers. As I reported here in January, the locations for the offshore wind projects are often on top of, or adjacent to, known habitat for the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis). In that article, I published a pair of maps. I wrote:

The maps clearly show that the offshore wind projects being approved by the Biden Administration could be built right on top of the habitat of the North Atlantic Right Whale, a species that is seeing huge population losses. Over the past decade or so, the whale’s population has plunged by about 26% and there are only about 70 breeding females left.

A dead 28 foot endangered right whale calf was found in the waters off of Chatham, Massachusetts. Researchers plan on performing a necropsy on the whale on Thursday, May 6, 2016. (David G. Curran)

I also noted that last year, a top NOAA official warned his counterpart at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management about the impact that offshore wind development could have on the whales:

“Additional noise, vessel traffic and habitat modifications due to offshore wind development will likely cause added stress that could result in additional population consequences to a species that is already experiencing rapid decline.” The author of the letter was Sean Hayes, the chief of the protected species branch at the NOAA’s National Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Hayes said that disturbance to the whales’ foraging areas “could have population-level effects on an already endangered and stressed species.” 

For more on the whale story, I highly recommend you watch the new film, Thrown To The Wind, which stars my friend, Lisa Linowes. (Lisa has been on the Power Hungry Podcast twice. Her most recent appearance was in June.) Acoustician Robert Rand also plays a prominent role in the film. His recordings of whale noises and the subsea noise being created by the ships doing high-decibel sonar mapping for the wind industry, are among the key moments in the film.

The documentary, directed and produced by Jonah Markowitz, is about 28 minutes long. It’s well-shot and edited. Author Michael Shellenberger and his colleague at Public, Leighton Woodhouse are the executive producers. The film shows how federal officials and NGOs have repeatedly ignored the danger offshore wind development poses to whales. And they’ve done so in order to facilitate massive federal tax giveaways to the mostly foreign companies, like Avangrid, who have been pushing offshore wind projects.

Meanwhile, NextEra Energy has seen its stock price hammered. The Florida-based company, the world’s largest producer of renewable energy, has used hardball legal tactics against rural communities across rural America as part of an effort to force those communities to accept wind projects. Its stock price plummeted after its subsidiary, NextEra Energy Partners LP, slashed its annual growth target. Over the past month, NextEra Energy Partners’ stock price has fallen by more than half and the parent company’s stock is down by about 22% over the past ten days.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that “rising interest rates are challenging wind and solar developers and blunting a tidal wave of government subsidies for green proejcts. Wind, solar, and other renewable projects involve high upfront expenditures, making them extremely sensitive to borrowing costs.” The article continued, “NextEra is a bellwether holding for clean-energy investors.” On Tuesday, Bloomberg’s Liam Denning wrote a piece headlined, “NextEra’s Rout Spells Trouble For Renewables.” And to borrow Avangrid’s phrase, more “economic headwinds” are ahead.

In June, the International Energy Agency reported that the cost of large-scale solar and wind power jumped by about 20% last year. As seen in the graphic above, LevelTen Energy recently found that the agreed price on power purchase agreements for wind and solar projects more than doubled between 2020 and the second quarter of 2023. Last month, the British government got no bids for new offshore wind projects. According to the BBC, the government blamed a “global rise” in inflation impacting supply chains had “presented challenges for projects.”

Who knew that inflation and high interest rates were good for whales, birds, bats, seascapes, and rural landscapes?

Official CFACT statement on Maryland offshore wind

There is a rise on whales death and dead birds. This is not caused by climate change but by offshore wind farms.

From  CFACT.

From Craig Rucker, President
CFACT

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) Executive Summary makes it clear it is intended to be the principal EIS for the Letter of Authorization (LOA) issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). The central purpose of the LOA is to authorize the incidental harassment of marine mammals that will be adversely impacted by project noise.

That there will be such a LOA is certain because US Wind applied for one six months ago. That this application is not mentioned in the DEIS is a major omission. The application proposes the harassment of over 6,000 marine mammals, listed by species. A significant number of these harassments are of endangered species, including the extremely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale.

This multitude of harassments is arguably the greatest environmental impact that will be manifested by the Maryland Wind project. These harassments should be a central focus of the DEIS, but amazingly, they are never mentioned. In fact, the word “harassment” never even occurs substantively, as it is only found three times in a “definition” section. Thus, there is no assessment of harassment or its impacts — an incredible omission.

If the projected harassments are never discussed and weighed, then this DEIS cannot be the EIS for the LOA. If this is to be the LOA EIS, then it will have to be extensively reworked and expanded. This cannot be done until the LOA is issued, at which time the actual authorized harassment numbers will be available for assessment. Even if this is not the LOA EIS, the projected numerous harassments must be analyzed and their impact assessed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Here, several issues arise, which are presented briefly below.

Harassment is itself an adverse impact. This is because harassment can easily lead to far worse impacts, up to and including the death of the animal. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) seems to concur, explaining in the following statement that harassment can cause harm. It refers to “pile driving” in particular, but the argument it contains holds for all harassments.

“It is possible that pile driving could displace animals into areas with lower habitat quality or higher risk of vessel collision or fisheries interaction. Multiple construction activities within the same calendar year could potentially affect migration, foraging, calving, and individual fitness. The magnitude of impacts would depend upon the locations, duration, and timing of concurrent construction. Such impacts could be long term, of high intensity, and of high exposure level. Generally, the more frequently an individual’s normal behaviors are disrupted or the longer the duration of the disruption, the greater the potential for biologically significant consequences to individual fitness. The potential for biologically significant effects is expected to increase with the number of pile-driving events to which an individual is exposed.”

Empire Wind DEIS v.1, Page 3.15-14, PDF page 372

We maintain the Maryland Wind DEIS is inadequate and needs to be revised for the following reasons:

1. The Maryland Wind DEIS does not analyze and assess harassment-induced impacts, and this is a major omission.

The DEIS projects there will be a likely increase in boat and ship accident frequency as a consequence of the project, finding it roughly doubles. (See Table 3.6.6-5 and related text.) A similar analysis must be made to assess similar adverse impacts, such as increased ship strikes on whales. Harassing whales into heavy-traffic ship lanes is a likely feature of the Maryland Wind project. And since ship strikes are a major cause of whale mortality and smaller marine mammals, then each of the impacts described in the Empire Wind quote above needs to be carefully assessed, species by species.

2. With pile driving, there is a major omission in the DEIS: alternative energy sources.

The alternative of nuclear power or even floating wind instead of using monopile foundations is not considered. Given that pile driving is projected to be the leading cause of harassment, other forms of energy alternatives might offer better mitigation and should be considered. Moreover, BOEM just let five leases off California specifically for floating wind, demonstrating the technology is feasible. Dominion Energy’s latest Integrated Resource Plan includes adding a number of modular nuclear reactors so that technology is also feasible. The present DEIS only includes a “no action” alternative, so it mistakenly omits other viable alternatives.

3. There is also a major unresolved issue with sonar harassment, the actual noise level.

Recent measurements by the Save Right Whales Coalition (SRWC) discovered that sonar survey sound levels were markedly higher than those being used to estimate harassment numbers. They were so much higher that a revised harassment projection might include five times as many harassments for sonar work. SRWC notified National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Dr. Richard Spinrad of these troublesome findings on September 8, 2023, well before the release of this DEIS. That notification and related materials are at https://saverightwhales.org/. This issue must be resolved for the sonar used at Maryland Wind, so that the correct harassment numbers are used for impact assessment.

4. A huge omission is the lack of assessment of harassment from operational noise.

Neither the NMFS LOA application nor this DEIS addresses this issue. They seem to assume that operational noise is harmless. However, Dr. Bob Stern, the former director of the Office of Environmental Compliance at the U.S. Department of Energy, presented a paper at the 2022 meeting of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium to the effect that large-scale operational noise was likely to create widespread harassment. The scale in question is that planned for Maryland Wind. This operational noise issue needs to be investigated and resolved in a revised DEIS.

5. The major issue of cumulative impact is not addressed.

This project is just one of many presently proposed to be built and operated simultaneously. The cumulative harassment impacts could be very large and must be assessed under NEPA for the Maryland Wind project. NMFS has deemed that harassment authorizations are limited to 30% of the stock population. At present, the simultaneous cumulative harassment requests exceed several hundred percent of the severely endangered North Atlantic Right Whale population. Such an impact needs to be cut back to 30% or less.

6. Life cycle harassment impact is a major omission.

The LOA is only for five years, while this EIS covers the impacts over the entire project life cycle. Thus, a separate harassment impact estimate, by species, will be needed for that longer period, especially given the harassment potential of operational noise.

Read CFACT’s Maryland Offshore Wind DEIS Comments as a PDF

Maryland-Offshore-Wind-DEIS-Comments-CFACT-1Herunterladen

Author


Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president.

Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others.

Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020.

As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.