FISHERMEN CAN’T BEAT OFFSHORE WIND SO THEY JOIN

Catching the Wind; Some commercial fisheries are bucking their industry with plans for their own wind farm off New Jersey
Yuliya Chernova, June 16, 2009 (Wall Street Journal)

SUMMARY
Fishermen’s Energy LLC was formed in 2007 when some New Jersey commercial fishermen decided they could fight offshore wind but they couldn’t stop it.

Their bid for rights to develop New Jersey’s first 350-megawatt offshore wind project lost out to the more obviously qualified Garden State Offshore, a joint venture of Deepwater Wind, an experienced wind developer, and Public Service Enterprise Group Inc., a New Jersey utility.

When New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine announced he was tripling to 3,000 megawatts the state’s offshore wind target, the fishermen applied again and this time got one of the two $4-million state grants to initiate development of a proposed 350-megawatt project off Atlantic City. (Bluewater Wind LLC got the other state grant.)

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Collectively, the companies comprising Fishermen’s Energy do $400 million per year in sales and own more than 100 fishing vessels. They oversee servicing, docking, repairing, processing, and marketing operations at fishery facilities in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.

Mobility is of crucial concern to the fisheries industry. They follow fish migrations and drag dredges and nets along the ocean bottom for surf clams, sea scallops, quahogs, mackerel, herring, squid, etc. Offshore energy projects could interfere with the mobility as well as block or alter migration patterns by altering habitat or creating physical or noise interferences.

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Commercial fisherman in New York stopped a 2006 proposal by utility Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) in 2006. LIPA subsequently came to understand the project was too close to shore and has since formed other offshore wind installation intentions, including a Long Island Sound project and a Lake Erie project. The new projects will carefully incorporate protections for the fisheries industry.

On the side of the wind developers is a 2004 European study (by the Ospar Commission) showing offshore installations create artificial reef-like circumstances in which fish proliferate.

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Fishermen’s Energy LLC currently has 20 employees and a consulting team. It is preparing to do resource and data collection. It will then turn a fishing boat into a geotechnical vessel for seabed core sample collection. It anticipates beginning construction of a $1 billion, 70-to-96 turbine project off Atlantic City in 2012.

Fishermen’s Energy is planning a shipyard to service both fishery and offshore vessels, will use fishery industry docks and retrofitted fishing vessels during construction as well as for ongoing maintenance, and will employ fishermen knowledgeable about handling vessels in harsh deep-water conditions for project installations.

The company is also studying future sites and reaching out to fisheries industry groups along the East Coast to develop alliances and future financial and working partners. It is working to make sure the fisheries industry is aware of offshore wind’s advantages and how hard developers are working to plan protections into projects.

Reportedly, the New Jersey offshore wind proposals have met little opposition from the fisheries industry so far.

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COMMENTARY
Experienced wind developers and utilities may have an advantage over a group of commercial fishermen but, with opposition from commercial fishing industries a major obstacle to the offshore wind developments winning permits, Fishermen’s Energy LLC has an angle of its own.

Fear of interference by generating and transmission infrastructure with fish habitat, migration and fishing equipment deployment has caused the fishing industries to resist offshore wind and wave energy projects.

A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report finding feasible the generation of 20% of U.S. electricity from wind by 2030 said 54 gigawatts of the power could come from offshore installations.

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The U.S. has no offshore wind installations while 33+ offshore-wind projects are generating electricity in Europe. Resistance from environmentalists, tourism businesses, the fisheries industry and other interest groups have prevented specific proposals in Massachusetts and New York as well as planning in New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Delaware from going forward. Cape Wind in Massachusetts has been held up since 2001.

The Atlantic Coast of New England and especially the Mid Atlantic Bight are uniquely well-suited for offshore wind. The Mid-Atlantic Bight, it has been estimated, could generate enough power to supply the entire East Coast. The Atlantic continental shelf, unlike that of the Pacific, is wide and shallow, making installation of turbines much more economic there than almost anywhere in U.S. offshore ocean waters. The rich and accessible resource is, furthermore, near enormous population centers, minimizing the extra expense of building long transmission lines. And those population centers already pay the highest utility prices in the U.S., so they will be more immune to power price increases early on in the transition to emissions-free energy sources.

Governor Corzine’s bold offshore wind target, 3,000 megawatts by 2020, would be 13% of the New Jersey’s electricity consumption. In order to achieve that large a capacity, the state is going to have to build a lot of turbines in its coastal waters.

Daniel Cohen, the President of Fishermen’s Energy LLC, is also the owner of Atlantic Capes Fisheries, Inc., and has worked as a professional fisherman off the Atlantic Coast since 1978, when he followed his father into the business. Cohen knows it is going to be impossible to build 3,000 megawatts of offshore wind without affecting fishing.

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Cohen also knows that offshore wind is coming to the Atlantic Coast whether he participates or not. By putting fishermen front and center in the decision making process, impacts can be minimized by special attention to siting. He wants, for instance, bigger and fewer turbines that will open up larger sections of the ocean. Where impacts cannot be mitigated, he instends to see there is compensation. And, finally, fishermen in charge of the building process can help their fellow fishermen transition to work in the wind industry.

Footnote: Insiders are whispering that the first U.S. offshore wind installation to be built and put into service may not be Massachusetts' controversial Cape Wind, and not the much-heralded New Jersey projects, and not the on again-off again New York projects, but the quietly and steadily progressing Rhode Island projects.

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QUOTES
- Daniel Cohen, owner, Atlantic Capes Fisheries Inc and President, Fishermen’s Energy LLC: “We realized that society felt strongly about the benefits of offshore wind and that it will be built despite our opposition, and we would be the victims of that change…”
- Lance Miller, chief of policy and planning, New Jersey Public Utilities Commission (NJ PUC): “Fishermen’s is not going to score as [high as] somebody that has PSEG Enterprises sitting there, that develops energy projects all over the world…”
- Bonnie Brady, chairwoman of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association: “They were going to privatize a section of the ocean that was premier fishing grounds…It’s not that fisheries are inherently against these projects,” she says. “Just prove that you are not polluting and not putting the turbines into productive fishing grounds.”
- Kevin Law, President, LIPA, on cancelling the 2006 project: “[It was] too close to the shore and too small, which made it too expensive…One thing we have to make sure is that in the effort to create green-collar jobs we don’t displace the fishing industry,” Mr. Law says.

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- Miller, NJ PUC: “It’s a fact we haven’t heard opposition from fishery interests thus far…”
- Andrew Gould, President, Arthur P. Gould & Co. merchant and investment banker to Fishermen’s Energy LLC: “Fishermen’s expects to retain significant ownership in each of its projects…[and] play a direct and active role in managing, operating and maintaining each of its projects, and in arranging the sales of the power that each project produces… We plan to expand ownership of Fishermen’s Energy and invite investment by commercial fishermen, fishing companies, and allied marine industries from Maine to South Carolina”