News

January 19, 2021 — For Massachusetts to meet its 2050 climate change emission goal, the state is going to have to green the grid, replacing fossil fuel power plants with clean renewable energy sources. To do this, the commonwealth is banking on offshore wind.

“Offshore wind is the linchpin of Massachusetts clean energy strategy and critical to our success,” said State Sen. Michael Barrett, head of the committee that oversees utilities and energy.

By 2030, developers of offshore wind hope to install over 2,000 turbines in the seas from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

The Vineyard Wind project off Martha’s Vineyard was expected to be the nation’s first utility-size wind farm at sea, but navigating the politics and pioneering the uncertain regulatory process has proven more difficult than expected.

Barrett said he blames the Trump administration for stalling the federal environmental permitting process.

“Boy, I feel badly for the private sector developers here,” he said. “They did come to Massachusetts first. Massachusetts beckoned them first, so it’s those private sector firms … they really have been dealt a delay time and again by the Trump people.”

Just days before Vineyard Wind expected to get final approval, federal regulators decided to delay the project for 18 months while a cumulative environmental impact of all proposed offshore projects was conducted.

The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA), which represents the commercial fishing industry, had wanted to slow the permitting process down.

“You know, it’s really, really hard to evaluate tradeoffs between something really important like fishing, and something really important like climate change mitigation,” said Annie Hawkins, the group’s executive director. “Both of these things need to be addressed together — and they can be — but right now the way we look at it, it’s not happening that way.”

Read the full story here

January 14, 2021 — A coalition of fishing communities last week sent a letter to Gov. Janet Mills expressing concern about proposed offshore wind energy development in the Gulf of Maine.

The coalition, called Responsible Offshore Development Alliance and based in Washington, D.C., asked the Mills administration to prioritize “an inclusive planning process and research program over the rapid implementation of commercial-scale OSW [offshore wind] facilities.”

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, and a number of Maine-based fishermen are members of the alliance.

The Governor’s Energy Office is leading the development of a research array of up to 12 turbines covering up to 16 square miles somewhere along the southern half of Maine’s coast. The location and size and number of the turbines haven’t been determined yet.

In a virtual information meeting last month, GEO Deputy Director Celina Cunningham said the state is seeking input from fishermen to determine locations hat would have minimal conflict with known fishing grounds.

But Responsible Offshore Development Alliance Executive Director Annie Hawkins wrote the group is “troubled that the timeline for the state’s proposed research array allows for neither adequate planning nor engagement with the fishing industry.”

She added that the fishing industry is willing to work with the state on the research array “to consider outcomes that may minimize impacts to fishing practices and provide much-needed socioeconomic and environmental data. However, this is only possible if we have a reasonable timeline and planning process to complete this work.”

Given the significant fishing occurring in the gulf and the relative lack of fine-scale data regarding fishing activity there, “the risk of unreasonable interference would greatly increase if a project is rushed and does not include close coordination with fishing experts,” she wrote.

The state’s timeline includes submitting an application for the research array to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management this winter or early spring.

The bureau is responsible for leasing sites in federal waters, which begin 3 miles from the coast.

But Hawkins said the timeline is too short to collect the fishing activity data needed to minimize impacts. The problem is exacerbated by the pandemic, she wrote.

“Despite the assurance that your office will work with us to ‘ensure that we organize a stakeholder process that is mindful of immediate health and business impacts from COVID-19,’ we have received no roadmap for how the state intends to develop partnerships with the industry that are cognizant of the significant current limitations on meetings, unusual time demands, and economic demands fishermen currently face as essential workers providing food to the nation,” she wrote.

The alliance also called for the research array to be considered as part of a larger planning effort around future offshore wind development, rather than as a stand-alone project.

“This approach does not allow the fishing industry to understand how the research array might fit into a larger OSW development or how to minimize the cumulative impacts of multiple such developments,” Hawkins wrote.

Over two dozen Swan’s Island fishermen signed onto a Facebook push to gather names to add to the letter. The letter was also available through the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association website, which told fishermen they could sign onto the letter by contacting the association.

In November, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association wrote to Mills to express its concern about proposed offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine and the potential that it will negatively impact Maine’s fishing industry

“Offshore wind technologies are evolving rapidly and because of that, there are significant deficiencies in our understanding of the environmental impacts as well as the displacement of fishermen that may result from these projects,” the associate’s executive director, Patrice McCarron, wrote.

“The MLA believes strongly in the need for a robust stakeholder process. To this end, the MLA and many other Maine-based fishing industry associations are working proactively on the offshore wind issue through the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance.”

January 8, 2021 — Fishermen say that Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ plan for a state-led offshore wind project is being rushed. And now news that a developer is considering a new commercial-scale wind project off the coast is adding to their fears.

In late November, the Mills administration announced that the state would seek a federal lease for up to 12 floating wind turbines off southern Maine that could produce enough energy for more than 70,000 homes.

Annie Hawkins, executive director of a fishing-industry trade group called the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, says that could considerably strengthen fishermen’s hand.

“It’s certainly much stronger than it was. And I think a pure reading of the memo would say that fishermen have priority,” she says, “and that would put fishing operations in a really protected spot.”

Hawkins says it’s unknown whether the Biden administration will enforce that opinion. Burgess says the administration is studying the opinion’s potential ramifications. He adds that the next step in determining a lease site for a research array off Maine, a scoping session, will take place this month, although it has yet to be scheduled.

Read the full release here

January 7, 2021 — Online stakeholder meetings last month revealed the depth of skepticism Maine officials face from the fishing and lobster industries over a proposal for a small test cluster of floating wind turbines off the state’s southern coast.

The series of four webinars, most of which were focused on the fishing industry, were intended to gather input on where to build the project. They were the first of several stakeholder engagement efforts that will continue early this year.

Originally announced in late November, the wind farm, which the state calls a “research array,” would be located 20 to 40 miles offshore in the Gulf of Maine and take up about 16 square miles of ocean, with a maximum of 12 turbines. This is about a tenth of the size of commercial wind lease areas along the East Coast, according to the state. The project would initially have a 20-year lease in the federal waters.

The state is looking to choose a site from an area (outlined in red on this map) in the Gulf of Maine toward the southern end of the state, roughly east of Portland.

Gathering meaningful input and data from the industry to decide on the most appropriate site for the project would take at least two years, said Annie Hawkins, executive director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance. This sentiment was echoed by many webinar attendees.

Applying to the Bureau of Ocean Land Management in the spring is “not even close,” Hawkins said. “The timeline is way off.” Adding the pandemic on top of that, which makes in-person meetings nearly impossible, further complicates the process, she said.

From state officials’ perspective, this is the most time-effective way to stay ahead of commercial development. But Hawkins said the state has leverage on commercial projects: Officials could refuse power purchase agreements with developers, or they could oppose federal projects that interfere with Maine’s fisheries, serving as a sort of veto.

Read the full story here

December 15, 2020 — The Vineyard Wind project, a proposed 800-megawatt offshore wind energy installation, has been stalled as the company – Vineyard Wind LLC – withdrew its construction and operations plan from review by the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (BOEM), on 1 December, effectively halting the project’s progress.

The withdrawal, announced in a letter to be published in the Federal Register on 16 December, is a win for the region’s fishing industry, which has objected to the project in addition to other proposed projects in the New England area. Fishermen have been worried about the proposed wind projects for years, and two groups representing fisheries in the region – the Fisheries Survival Fund and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) – have made layout suggestions, requested revisions to an earlier Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and have pushed for a pause on development amid the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

RODA was not the only organization calling for a second look at the project proposal. A pair of reports by both NOAA Fisheries’ Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee and the Science Center for Marine Fisheries both raised further questions on how the wind projects would affect fisheries in the area, and called into question a draft EIS that BOEM issued in June.

The fishing industry also aired its grievances to U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in July, expressing concern at the lack of input from the fishing industry and the potential for the projects to impact historic fishing areas.

Now, BOEM has terminated the preparation of an EIS for the plan submitted by Vineyard Wind, a statement that was due in just a few weeks.

“In light of Vineyard Wind’s letter dated 1 December, 2020, this notice advises the public that the preparation and completion of an EIS is no longer necessary, and the process is hereby terminated,” the BOEM notice states.

Even as the Vineyard Wind project stalled, Maine has started preparing for its own potential offshore wind project. In October, the U.S. Economic Development Administration awarded a USD 2.2 million (EUR 1.8 million) grant to the Maine Governor’s Energy Office to advance offshore wind in Maine. As part of that, the state announced its intention to apply for the country’s first offshore floating wind research array, to be located in the Gulf of Maine.

The state has already pledged to work with fishing interests in order to develop the project “responsibly.”

“The state pledges to work collaboratively with fishing and other interests in considering where any offshore wind projects could be located and work to minimize any negative impacts,” a press release from the Maine Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) states.

As part of that process, the state is hosting a series of webinars that will touch upon the project’s potential impact to fisheries.

“The state, through the Governor’s Energy Office and in collaboration with the Department of Marine Resources, is fully committed to engaging stakeholders, in particular the fishing industry, in the development of the project, its siting, and the research questions that the initiative seeks to answer,” the GEO said in a release. “The state has initiated a collaborative process that gives fishermen and other stakeholders direct influence in the development of the proposed project.”

The webinars are being run through a collaboration with the Maine Fisherman’s Forum, an annual three-day meeting that was supposed to take place in March 2021 before it was canceled in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read the full story here

December 15, 2020 — Vineyard Wind’s request for “a temporary pause” in the federal review of its 800-megawatt offshore wind energy project triggered an announcement from the  Department of Interior that it must restart its entire permit application process.

In a flurry of activity by the outgoing Trump administration, the head of the Interior Department’s legal staff, solicitor Daniel H. Jorjani on Tuesday issued new guidance stressing that if Interior Secretary David Bernhardt “determines that either fishing or vessel transit constitute ‘reasonable uses…of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas and the territorial sea,’ the Secretary has a duty to prevent interference with that use.”

The 16-page memo asserts the secretary of Interior should determine “what is unreasonable” interference from offshore wind turbines “based on the perspective of the fishing user.” It’s a victory for commercial fishing advocates including the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance and Fisheries Survival Fund, who went directly to Bernhardt in July with complaints their concerns are not adequately addressed by the Bureau of Ocean Energy.

The agency had been poised to issue a record of decision Jan. 15 that would allow Vineyard Wind to proceed toward construction – a timeline that now could stretch out another 18 months, unless a Biden administration very supportive of wind energy steps in.

Even if the next administration reverses course, recent events are a big win for fishermen, said Annie Hawkins, executive director of RODA.

Even if Biden were to issue an executive order on Vineyard Wind “to get in back in the queue,” the developers at minimum would need to republish their revised plan for review and comment under the National Environmental Policy Act, said Hawkins.

The new legal guidance could likewise be amended by new lawyers, “but that’s still on the record” and will keep fishermen’s concerns elevated in future review of Vineyard Wind and other offshore wind projects, she said.

“I do think the memo fundamentally changes the balance of power,” said Hawkins.

Outwardly developers of the lease off southern New England are expressing confidence the process will move forward.

“We have received acknowledgement from BOEM of the temporary withdrawal of our COP, as we requested, and we look forward to working together again after we notify the agency to resume its review” of a revised construction and operations plan, according to a statement from Vineyard Wind.

“Over the past three years, this project has been through an extremely rigorous process and we believe the agency can promptly restart the process.  As we’ve said at the time we made this initial decision, a short delay now still allows us to deliver the project on the appropriate timeline, with financial close in the second half of 2021 and power coming onto the grid in 2023.

“We continue to progress on our due diligence efforts and we intend to notify the BOEM in several weeks when it can resume and complete its review of the COP.”

Read the full story here

December 17, 2021 — The following article was released by the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance on 12/15 related to Offshore Wind Farms:

Three significant positive developments affecting fisheries and offshore wind have occurred since Friday. The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) has worked on these issues to ensure the safety and continued viability of our U.S. domestic fisheries, our coastal communities, and seafood consumers in light of offshore wind energy development. These wins were not achieved through high-powered lobbying or well-financed campaigns, but rather by expressing a clear and consistent message based in science and fact, making reasonable requests, and working diligently with elected and appointed officials in the Administration, both parties in Congress, career agency officials, and a multitude of state and private sector entities.

It is reassuring to see reason and logic prevail in government decisions. In addition to the many officials who contributed to these outcomes, we are immensely thankful for the efforts made by our own members, by others in the fishing industry and its advocates, and by those conscientious members of the offshore wind industry.

The Jones Act

What happened: On Friday, the Senate passed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that included a version of the “Garamendi Amendment,” which clarifies that all federal laws–including the Jones Act–apply to “all installations and other devices permanently or temporarily attached to the seabed, which may be erected thereon for the purpose of exploring for, developing, or producing resources, including non-mineral energy resources.” President Trump has threatened to veto the NDAA bill, but it is considered to have a veto-proof majority in Congress.

What It Means: A frequently cited benefit of the development of offshore wind energy has been domestic job creation. But the fact is that developers have planned to survey and construct early projects using vessels, equipment, and crew from abroad, with a longer term goal of building out a U.S. supply chain. RODA has submitted comment letters and raised attention to the Jones Act’s application to the offshore wind industry to date, which differed from all other ocean activities. This new statutory language means that many of those contracts and project plans will need to be revised to use U.S. vessels and crew from the start, consistent with all other U.S. industries. Currently, there are no Jones Act qualified vessels that can transport or install offshore wind turbines. Getting the investments required to build them may be challenging, and getting installation vessels in the water will take time. However, ensuring that any economic benefits generated by offshore wind energy accrue to our manufacturers and local communities is the right thing to do.

BOEM Vineyard Wind decision

What happened: The Department of Interior has announced that the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement for the Vineyard Wind project is no longer necessary, and the process is terminated effective immediately. In plain English, this means the federal permitting process for the Vineyard Wind project is canceled. This news will become “official” in the Federal Register on December 16th.

What it means: On December 3, just a week before a final Environmental Impact Statement of its project was to be published in the Federal Register, Vineyard Wind announced that it had “decided to temporarily withdraw its Construction and Operations Plan (COP) from further review by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).”  BOEM responded by effectively stating that there is no “pause” option in the regulations, and accordingly “there is no longer a proposal for a major federal action awaiting technical and environmental review, nor is there a decision pending before BOEM,” and the process is “terminated.” RODA and local fishing interests repeatedly requested that Vineyard Wind, neighboring wind leaseholders, the states, BOEM, and USCG modify project designs to lessen impacts to the fishing industry. This led to a re-orientation of planned turbine rows in the dominant fishing direction, but other critical issues such as the addition of transit lanes for the safety of ocean-going fishing vessels were ignored. Now, Vineyard Wind will need to re-apply for its project, but the new timeline may not match supply contracts or the power purchase agreement with Massachusetts.

Department of the Interior internal legal memorandum

What happened: The Department of the Interior (DOI) issued an internal legal memorandum interpreting its statutory mandate to prevent offshore wind energy’s interference with fishing. Previous DOI guidance on the statutory language, which requires “prevention of interference with reasonable uses [including fishing] of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas,” indicated that offshore renewable energy projects could not interfere with the legal right to fish. This new memo explicitly changes that guidance, saying “[n]owhere does the statute indicate that the Secretary is only to prevent interference with the legal right to navigate or fish in an area. It is the Secretary’s job to provide for the prevention of interference with those uses.” In short, it states: (1) That the Secretary must ensure that offshore wind energy projects do not unreasonably interfere with fishing operations; (2) That fishermen’s perspectives are part of what determine whether interference is unreasonable; (3) That such interference is considered on a cumulative instead of project-specific level; and (4) If in question it must err on the side of less interference rather than more.

What It Means: This fundamentally shifts the balance of interests toward fishing, a critical provider of food security and low-carbon footprint protein, over offshore wind energy. Under previous guidance the presumption was that wind energy development should take precedence, and proceed in accordance with what developers determined to be optimal, and fishing interests would need to adjust. While a future Administration could revoke or refine the memorandum, it presents a solid legal argument for challenging any such action.

What does the future hold?

These three recent events create a better opportunity for a future in which the interests of all reasonable users of the seas can coexist.

When the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act becomes law, and projects must comply with the Jones Act, this will create a delay in the timeline for construction. It is crucial that the incoming Administration and interested states use that time to invest in science and research to understand—and ultimately minimize—environmental and economic impacts.

• We need to start collecting robust baseline data immediately in all places where offshore wind projects may be considered in the future.
• We need to retool our fisheries and protected resource monitoring protocols so important ecological data that forms the basis of fisheries management is not disrupted.
• We need to understand the environmental impacts that have occurred from rapid large-scale development of offshore wind in places like Europe, which the European Parliament is currently reviewing and finding are largely unknown and possibly much greater than anticipated.
• We need to understand the variations between the ocean and atmospheric environments of the European installations, and significantly different environments of U.S. federal waters, which are unique and contain some of the most productive and ecologically complex benthic environments in the world.
• We need to much better understand the economic interactions between the two industries so we can preserve and promote traditional, historic, and sustainable fishing, while also identifying any possible economic opportunities that may arise for fishing communities from offshore wind energy production when it arrives in the future.
• We need to continue to improve offshore wind energy and other renewable technology, including turbine and cable recycling methods, so that we can thoughtfully and quickly reduce carbon emissions while avoiding serious adverse environmental consequences associated with the large land use and materials needs of current technology.
• We need to prioritize development of regional transmission systems to minimize the amount of structure that is ultimately placed in the water and on or under the seabed.
• We need to build better relationships between fishermen, offshore wind energy developers, states, and federal managers so that information is effectively communicated and innovative solutions can be identified.
• We need to develop decommissioning plans for when offshore wind leases are over that properly mitigate long-term environmental impacts and restore impacted habitats so we don’t create permanent steel graveyards in the ocean.

Most importantly, now that we’ve witnessed a project’s plans collapse due to failure to minimize fisheries impacts, we must work together to improve our planning process — as we in the fishing industry have been requesting for over a decade. Fishermen must be at the table and play a meaningful role in project siting and design. Ways to minimize and mitigate impacts must be identified up front and fully incorporated into all project plans. Although a handful of states and developers have made strong efforts to operate this way, it has never been done effectively on the correct spatial scale. In fact, we need to create new public, transparent, and inclusive regional processes that fully incorporate fisheries science and operational knowledge.

The need for a new planning process has been recognized by fishing interests and by offshore wind energy advocates. This was most recently clearly stated in a December 11th interview by Jeffrey Grybowski, the former CEO of Deepwater Wind, which was acquired by Ørsted in 2019.

“Obviously there are fishing groups in the Northeast that have raised really significant concerns. Those concerns can be addressed, but I also acknowledge they were real concerns. I don’t think anyone is suggesting their concerns should’ve been dismissed and projects just should have been approved.”

Mr. Grybowski went on to note that the problems with Vineyard Wind were not due to political bias.

“…some have said Vineyard Wind’s permit delays are due to some kind of anti-renewable bias within the administration. I disagree with the idea that — I think that view diminishes the nuance and complexity of what we’re all doing. New lease areas are complicated. There are stakeholders out there in favor of new lease areas. And so to simply blame everything on a political viewpoint understates the nuance and complexity of what we’re trying to do.”

The need for change has now been made clear by officials on both sides of the political aisle. Speaking at his annual climate change conference, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) stated

“Right from the very get-go, even before the filing … it should be a requirement of the filing to bring a statement of what work you’ve done with the fishing community, what their concerns have been. … Developers shouldn’t just get to go out there, cut a private deal with their funders, their investors, and then put their stamp down in the public ocean as if they owned it.”

These recent developments will significantly shift the discourse around offshore wind and fisheries to make sure fishermen’s needs and knowledge are afforded greater priority. Taken together, they offer a significant opportunity to fix the broken offshore wind energy planning process. Regardless of political or industry affiliation, we must now work together to properly balance uses of the ocean commons and maintain sustainable fishing practices.

More information and resources may be found by visiting the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance website: https://rodafisheries.org/

January 6, 2021 — Vineyard Wind has withdrawn its construction and operation plans from the federal permitting process, suddenly throwing the future into limbo for the international consortium that has been at the front of the pack in the race to build offshore wind farms off the American eastern seaboard.

The first announcement that Vineyard Wind would withdraw from federal review was buried in a public statement that went out Dec. 1 about the company’s selection of General Electric’s Haliade-X as its preferred wind turbine generator model.

In followup statements Monday, both Vineyard Wind and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the federal agency responsible for reviewing the project, confirmed the withdrawal.

Vineyard Wind is a joint wind energy venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Projects and Avangrid Renewables. The $2.8 billion plan to build a 108-turbine, 800-megawatt wind farm in federal waters about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard has been working its way through the dense federal permitting process for the past three years.

“That federal register notice is crystal clear,” said Annie Hawkins, director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which advocates for commercial fishing. “The review of your plan has been terminated. You can resubmit from day one.”

Ms. Hawkins said the decision from BOEM was just one of three major developments for fishing interests this week. A Senate bill was passed requiring companies to use American ships and labor for offshore wind construction, just as an internal BOEM memo to Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt argued that offshore wind development could not unreasonably interfere with fishing operations, rather than simply the “legal right to fish.”

A copy of the memo was provided to the Gazette.

“From the fishing industry perspective, this is like hitting the trifecta,” Ms. Hawkins said. “It seems to be that this is a game-changing week for offshore wind.

Read the full story here

December 13, 2021 — It has been a long four years for those in the environmental field here in the US – four years filled with rampant attempts by the Trump administration to remove, weaken, or circumvent environmental protections; promotion of climate science denialism; and obstruction of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This amplified the relentless, global march of climate change and its associated natural disasters and was all topped off by a worldwide pandemic and recession.

The incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris promises a significant shift in policies in many areas, including ocean management – but what exactly needs to be done and how likely are changes to occur? We hear from eight US ocean policy experts about what they expect and/or hope for in terms of US ocean management under the incoming Biden-Harris administration.

Lane Johnston, Responsible Offshore Development Alliance: US offshore wind development may proceed at an unrestrained pace to address climate change.

Editor’s note: Lane Johnston is programs manager for the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA). RODA is a coalition of fishing industry associations and fishing companies with an interest in improving the compatibility of new offshore development with their businesses.

As we go into a new administration, how to meaningfully and quickly address climate change re-enters the public discourse, and there is both excitement and concern that US offshore wind (OSW) development will proceed at an unrestrained pace. The increasing pressure on the Biden administration to address climate change, invest in renewable energy sources, and set an example on the international stage through these efforts is vital – but development should proceed thoughtfully. Developing new industries should be looked at closely and holistically to ensure efforts do not evolve without a full understanding of the environmental, social, and economic consequences that they will bear.

We have yet to see approval of a commercial scale OSW project in federal waters. In 2020, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) initiated a cumulative impact analysis looking at the large-scale effects of the leased OSW development areas off of Southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic. While conducting more research and applying funding to better understand resources that may be impacted is commendable, this should not be the green light indicator for all projects moving forward. OSW developers and regulatory agencies must engage at the local, state, and regional scale throughout lifespan of a lease.

All the changes, positive and negative, that will come with OSW development are hard to put into a single formula. For renewable energy projects to be successful, it is important to be transparent and realistic about the foreseeable impacts and be willing to put research dollars into investigating the impacts we do not yet know. Hopefully, the new administration will prioritize using the best available science to de-conflict where possible and mitigate when necessary.

January 6, 2021 — Maine fishermen say that Gov. Janet Mills’ plan for a state-led offshore wind project is being rushed. And now news that a developer is considering a new commercial-scale wind project off the coast is adding to their fears.