Tag: offshore wind energy

In Historic Move, Maryland Public Service Commission Approves Two Offshore Wind Farms

The Maryland Public Service Commission today awarded offshore wind renewable energy credits (ORECs) to two projects, bringing what will become the nation’s largest offshore wind farms to Maryland’s shores. The two projects will bring 368 megawatts of wind energy capacity, together yielding over $1.8 billion of in-state spending, spurring the creation of almost 9,700 new direct and indirect jobs and contributing $74 million in state tax revenues over 20 years, according to the PSC.

Mike Tidwell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, stated:

“After years of visionary advocacy from citizens and businesses across Maryland, the state’s Public Service Commission today approved two major offshore wind farms off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland. These wind farms will be truly pioneering facilities, leading Maryland and the nation toward a 21st century economy that combats climate change and creates jobs in droves at the same time.

The Chesapeake Climate Action Network commends the PSC for correctly assessing the economic, health, and environmental gains integral to these projects. Major thanks must also go to the Maryland General Assembly for passing landmark legislation in 2013, which created incentives and guidelines for offshore wind development. And major credit must go to former Governor Martin O’Malley (D) and his staff who, for years, lead this fight with a vision filled with climate urgency, a sense of social justice, and a devotion to sustainable and vibrant economic growth. This major move toward offshore wind power would not have happened without Governor O’Malley.

Now CCAN is optimistic that the PSC approval today will quickly lead to near-term construction of nearly 400 megawatts of offshore wind. This marks the real start toward an extensive offshore wind industry that will one day soon stretch from Cape Cod, MA to Cape Hatteras, NC and provide as much as a third of the East Coast’s electricity

CONTACT:

Denise Robbins; Chesapeake Climate Action Network; denise@chesapeakeclimate.org; 608-620-8819

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On offshore wind, Congress is kingmaker

If congressional action is the proposed method to solve policy issues on climate and taxes, my usual advice is to draft a Plan B. In this realm, Congress is like that annoying friend who’s always a day late and a dollar short – reliably unreliable. Unfortunately, when it comes to the future of offshore wind in America there is no Plan B. Congress holds the cards.
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Another step toward Virginia offshore wind energy, but concerns over Dominion feet-dragging linger

Beth Kemler, Virginia State Director for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, released the following statement in response to today’s announcement from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) that it is moving forward with an offshore wind energy auction off the coast of Virginia on September 4th.

“Every time we move a little closer to seeing powerful wind turbines generating energy off our coast, it’s cause for celebration. At the same time, we have lingering concerns that auctioning the area as one big block will reduce competition and enable the winning company to drag its feet. Dominion Power, which has an abysmal record of bringing new clean energy online in Virginia, was the main proponent of auctioning the lease area to just one developer, and a number of environmental groups warned BOEM against that proposal.

“We’re troubled by the possibility of Dominion winning the auction for the entire wind energy area, given the lackadaisical timetable for offshore wind development that company officials have expressed in the past. We don’t want the company to buy up the whole lease block and then sit on it for years and years.

“Climate change is here now. It’s flooding the streets of Norfolk through sea-level rise and it’s raising the death toll of summer heat. We need companies to develop large-scale clean energy projects as quickly as possible.”

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Dominion Virginia Power offshore wind energy Virginia

Will Norfolk be the next New Orleans?

The 2013 hurricane season kicked off this weekend, and CCAN’s director Mike Tidwell has a must-read op-ed in today’s Virginian-Pilot: Will Norfolk be the next New Orleans?

As climate change brings higher seas and bigger storms, nobody in Virginia has higher stakes in facing the climate crisis than Hampton Roads residents. Mike wrote the piece to connect the dots between dirty fossil fuels, climate change, and the water lapping at coastal Virginians’ doorsteps.

Read a preview of the op-ed below. Then, click here to read the full piece, and click on the graphic below to share it on Facebook. We’re declaring “game on” for saving the wildlife, people and culture of this great Virginia coast, but we can’t do it without you.

“A hurricane is coming, and it’s going to wipe us out.”
Papoose Ledet, a Cajun shrimper, told me this as we rode on his wooden trawler just south of New Orleans. I was a visiting journalist, and it was the spring of 2001, more than four years before Katrina. How did Ledet – and millions of other Louisianans – know the Big One was coming prior to Katrina’s actual arrival in 2005?

Simple. They saw the ocean creeping steadily into their lives, for years, with their own eyes. They saw the tides grow higher and higher. They saw unusual and increasingly intense flooding of streets and homes. And they saw scientists issue study after study showing that the ocean was literally rising, an obvious threat to Louisiana’s flat, watery coastal region, where some areas were below sea level.

If you live in coastal Hampton Roads, take a deep breath and re-read that last paragraph. You live, right now, in a world eerily parallel to south Louisiana prior to 2005. Every time you take a different route to work – or miss work completely – due to newly flooded streets, you become more like a citizen of New Orleans.

Read on: http://hamptonroads.com/2013/05/will-norfolk-be-next-new-orleans

Click to spread the word on Facebook:

offshore wind energy Virginia

Victory: MD votes for offshore wind!

On September 23, 2010 at St. Paul’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Ocean City, Maryland, CCAN and other advocates held our first town hall in the campaign to bring offshore wind power to the state.

Over two and a half years later, on March 8th, 2013, the Maryland Senate joined the House of Delegates in passing the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013 (HB 226), creating a process to support the development of Maryland’s first offshore wind farm.

Marylanders for offshore wind power: what follows is your story – a chronological timeline of key events in the campaign that brought us to today. It was all of your phone calls, your 10,000 petitions, hundreds of hand-written letters, letters-to-the-editor, and trips to Annapolis to rally together and to lobby your legislators that have made this happen. Maryland will be a leader in offshore wind because of you.

Maryland offshore wind energy Victories

Obama Administration Takes Important Step Forward on Virginia Offshore Wind, But Process Raises Cause for Concern

For Immediate Release

November 30, 2012

Contact:

Kelly Trout, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org

Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838, mtidwell@chesapeakeclimate.org

RICHMOND – Chesapeake Climate Action Network Director Mike Tidwell had the following statement in response to the Obama administration’s announcement that it is moving forward with offshore wind lease sales off the coasts of Virginia, Massachusetts and Rhode Island:

“Today, Virginia is one step closer to harnessing clean, offshore wind power, and we applaud the Obama administration for taking this step forward. At the same time, the decision to lease the waters off Virginia as a single block is cause for concern.

offshore wind energy Virginia

Federal officials green light offshore wind energy leasing in Maryland

Wind energy development off of Maryland’s Eastern Shore inched closer to reality after federal officials in Baltimore announced that developing wind energy there would not harm the coastal environment.

In a statement released last week, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar – along with Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Tommy Beaudreau – released findings from a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) assessment indicating there would be “no significant environmental impacts from issuing wind energy leases in areas off the mid-Atlantic Coast.”

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Marylanders: Rally for State's Clean Energy Future!

In less than one week on Wednesday, January 11th, the Maryland General Assembly will begin its 2012 session. If reducing childhood asthma attacks, bringing back Maryland manufacturing, and solving our climate crisis are important to you, there will be one issue you’ll be watching above all others: offshore wind power.

And if offshore wind power is important to you, please join Marylanders from across the state at 10:30am next Wednesday to rally in front of the State House as legislators enter for the first time this year. Let’s show our leaders that we are expecting leadership on Maryland’s clean energy future. They’ve passed laws to develop renewable energy and reduce global warming pollution. Now it’s time to fulfill the promise of those laws and we’ll need offshore wind power to do it.

Maryland Maryland General Assembly offshore wind energy Rally

The Keystone XL pipeline Looks to the Past, While Activists look to the future

The push for the Keystone XL pipeline puzzles me. Society is foolishly increasing its dependence on oil by investing more and more in this diminishing dirty resource. Meanwhile, many of the clean and renewable alternatives that our future requires already exist and continue to improve in both efficiency and cost.

The fact of the matter is that we must begin to reorient our entire energy system away from fossil fuels. To that end, there is very exciting news about five new advances coming out of MIT that look to utilize solar energy just about everywhere. In other news there was a great breakthrough in transportation; for the first time a German engineered electric vehicle traveled 1000 miles on a single charge!

While there may be some doubt about current energy conversion rates with solar energy, wind is quite the proven technology for replacing fossil fuels in a very big way. For example, Denmark currently gets about 20% of its total electrical need from wind alone, generating jobs and reducing green house gas emissions all along the way. In the bigger picture, Europe is producing 5.5% of its electricity from wind as of 2010, but has plans for massive investment. According to the European Wind Energy Association, strong EU regulatory framework is guiding 194 billion Euros of investment with the goal of tripling wind energy production to over 15% by 2020.

And here we sit investing in expanding an oil pipeline that already exists. To put it in a wider perspective, the general estimate for the Keystone XL pipeline rings in at around 7 billion. Instead, we should invest that money installing clean, renewable sources of power right near major coastal populations where it is needed most. Or, we can continue to delay the inevitable and invest in a dwindling dirty fuel while ignoring its litany of

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Maryland Youth Campaign for Offshore Wind

This post was written by Caroline Selle who will be a senior at St Mary’s College of Maryland. It was originally posted on wearepowershift.org

In between bites of pizza and homemade peach and blackberry pie, the members of the Maryland Student Climate Coalition (MSCC) spent the bulk of last Saturday planning our campaign for offshore wind. Clean, job-creating, renewable energy like offshore wind is exactly the kind of resource we want to use to power our homes and our schools.

As a resource, offshore wind is kind of incredible. The wind blows relatively constantly off the coast, including at times of peak power usage. Once the infrastructure is in place, it’s almost completely free to generate wind power. Best of all, wind power is clean and renewable. It reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2 and will help public health by creating cleaner air and cleaner water.

Unfortunately, last year the Maryland General Assembly failed to pass a bill that obligated major Maryland utilities to purchase offshore wind power for the next twenty years. The bill would have helped Maryland reach it’s 20% by 2022 Renewable Portfolio Standard and given wind developers the incentive to build offshore wind projects that create thousands of manufacturing, operation, and maintenance jobs during their lifespan.

This fall, the MSCC is running a campaign to make sure that offshore wind is a part of Maryland’s future. We will petition our school and community leaders to support offshore wind, because it is a way to create jobs, harness clean and safe energy, and reach our renewable electricity goals.

Past MSCC campaigns changed the way Maryland leaders looked at youth. Once again, we are going to use our combined energy, skills, and resources to change the state’s landscape and bring offshore wind to our homes.

clean energy Maryland offshore wind energy Power Shift