Offshore wind company talks environmental studies, community outreach in coastal Oregon

Oregon — Amid pushback from commercial fishing industries along the Oregon Coast over wind farm projects slated for offshore areas in Brookings and Coos Bay, one potential lessee is opening up about the process the company would have to follow if selected.

"The approach for offshore wind development is to comprehensively study a range of topics that go anywhere from focusing on impacts to fisheries but also impacts to wildlife, mammals and other sea creatures," Dan Jaynes, a Business Developer for Aker Offshore Wind, a Norwegian-based company, said.

The project is part of the Department of Interior's (DOI) Outer Continental Shelf Renewable Energy Program authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. It received a push from the Biden-Harris administration's clean energy plan with the goal of reaching 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. The Oregon project is projected to produce 3 gigawatts.

DOI's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), responsible for implementing the program, has set up at least 14 different task forces in states that have expressed interest in offshore wind energy projects. Oregon is one of those.

Last week the agency announced the Brookings and Coos Bay call areas where it plans to open leases for 1,158,400 acres of wind turbines that would be put in at least 12 nautical miles offshore.

BOEM is now in the process of conducting impact and environmental assessments to determine where within that call area the projects could go with the least amount of impact to the environment and the fishing industry.

Those in the fishing industry, however, complain that the leasing process involves an actual Environmental Impact Study and Statement (EIS) too late in the process (after leases are granted) and at a scale that is not representative of the project's full scope.

Annie Hawkins, Executive Director of Responsible Offshore Wind Development Alliance (RODA), a coalition of fishing industry associations, says the industry would like to see a smaller-scale project authorized first so that impacts can be studied before leases are granted to potentially multiple lessees in those call areas.

"What's unfortunate is that we are not starting with some projects studying them carefully (testing) these hypotheses about how the environment is going to change and how the ocean is going to change. We are not giving ourselves time in this leasing schedule," she said.

Once BOEM completes its initial assessment and narrows down the lease locations from the broader call areas, it will put those up for auction to the energy sector.

Jaynes, with Aker Offshore Wind, noted that if a lease is granted, the company will need to conduct its own project-based EIS. He said that could take five or more years.

"Over the course of those five years, we are conducting detailed analyses on all of those things that I just mentioned in addition to the conditions of the seabed floor," he said. "It's a very time-consuming, costly process that the industry is looking forward, frankly, to stepping through in order to get a good grasp on where the risks are for development."

Hawkins pointed out that projects to the scale of what is expected in Oregon (3 gigawatts) are not in existence anywhere else, which makes it difficult to understand how the project will actually affect the fishing industry. Current projects in Rhode Island are of a much smaller scale and not located in prime commercial fishing zones like Coos Bay and Brookings. That project is also not a floating turbine, like Oregon's plan, but is instead planted in the ocean floor.

She said the best sites for comparison are in Europe, but many of those are also planted in the ocean floor with the exception of the world’s first floating wind farm, the Hywind project in Scotland which has been in operation since 2017. That project has five turbines that cover an area of roughly 2.5 miles.

She said the project in Scotland is located in an area that does not see a lot of commercial fishing. Therefore, impacts to the industry can not be mirrored when looking at Oregon's call areas. Because projects of this scale do not exist yet, Hawkins said there are no peer-reviewed studies that can provide data on impacts to the environment or fishing industry. However, she pointed to a non-peer-reviewed research paper published by German Researchers at Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon that suggests North Sea turbines have impacted airflows and sea currents.

Hawkins noted that another concern is that the components that would anchor the turbine to the ocean floor as well as the electrical cables could create access issues for fishing vessels.

Though BOEM has held some meetings with leaders in the fishing industry in Oregon, Hawkins said that invitations were not extended to all stakeholders in the industry. She said overall there is an expectation that industry stakeholders use the public comment processes to provide feedback on their concerns, but noted that this is not a two-way conversation and fishing concerns are not being addressed.

"You have this feeling within fishing communities that all of the hard work that they have put in to rebuild fish stocks to kind of cool off and follow the laws and the regulations to rebuild our fish stocks which is happening. Our stocks are coming back. They are looking at that not being valued at all," Hawkin said. "Like, 'okay yeah you have done all of this hard work for, in a lot of cases, generations to rebuild these stocks to support our communities and now we are just going to lease your fishing grounds and we don't care what you think about it because climate change.'"

Jaynes acknowledged the need to engage with the fishing community and pointed out that Aker plans to do that if they win a lease in Oregon's call areas.

"We understand that having a careful and frequent dialogue with the fishing community is part of the development process," he said.

When asked if the company was doing anything to build those connections with the Oregon fishing community in the meantime he said, "our outreach is through a couple of select representatives from the fishing industry. Going forward, we realize that we need to cast a wider net."

BOEM has not responded to multiple requests for comment.