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A just transition to renewable energy requires accounting for the effects of offshore wind projects (OWPs) on the fishing industry. Research on the interaction of OWPs with coastal communities and fisheries in the United Kingdom and the United States offers insights into minimizing conflict and enhancing constructive engagement between fishers and wind energy developers. Recent innovations include earlier and more meaningful inclusion of fisheries representatives in planning and decisionmaking, involving fisheries liaisons in the process, and conducting more cumulative studies and taking collaborative approaches to considering the effects of OWP on fishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With results from a nationwide survey sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, factors that affect outdoor audibility and noise annoyance of wind turbines were evaluated. Wind turbine and summer daytime median background sound levels were estimated for 1043 respondents. Wind turbine sound level was the most robust predictor of audibility yet only a weak, albeit significant, predictor of noise annoyance. For each 1 dB increase in wind turbine sound level (L1h-max), the odds of hearing a wind turbine on one's property increased by 31% [odds ratio (OR): 1.31; 95% CI (confidence interval): 1.25–1.38] and the odds of moving to the next level of annoyance increased by 9% (OR: 1.09; 95% CI: 1.02–1.16). While audibility was overwhelmingly dependent on turbine sound level, noise annoyance was best explained by visual disapproval (OR: 11.0; 95% CI: 4.8–25.4). The final models correctly predict audibility and annoyance level for 80% and 62% of individuals, respectively. The results demonstrate that among community members not receiving personal benefits from wind projects, the Community Tolerance Level of wind turbine noise for the U.S. aligns with the international average, further supporting observations that communities are less tolerant of wind turbine noise than other common environmental noise sources at equivalent A-weighted sound levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published research suggests the presence of a large wind resource off the U.S. coast. Although there is considerable interest among wind power developers in the coastal states, few projects have been proposed to date. A major factor constraining resource development is the lack of a regulatory framework to provide access to the ocean space and allocate property rights to the submerged lands where the wind turbines can be installed. Efforts to address this void began in 2005 at the federal level, but it has progressed unevenly and unsuccessfully since that time. At the state level, no coastal state has adopted a comprehensive and detailed regime to regulate, manage, and oversee this new ocean use in state waters. This article examines various approaches taken by coastal states to facilitate existing and emerging ocean uses and recommends a regulatory framework for installing offshore wind turbines in state waters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We begin this Article by discussing the rapid domestic growth of wind power and the implications for turbine-related avian and bat impacts, and then examine other anthropogenic sources of avian mortality. Next, we provide a broad overview of the U.S. wildlife laws most pertinent to the conservation of bats and migratory birds, before moving on to provide a detailed account of the legislative history and judicial interpretation of liability for incidental take under the Migratory .Bird Treaty Act. We then broaden our view and consider the take of migratory birds by wind turbines in context—that is, we compare the effects of wind turbines on wildlife to the impacts caused by other means of electricity generation. Finally, we suggest a way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the controversy over the resumption of whaling by the Makah Indian Nation in the U.S. Cultural context of Makah whaling; Legal framework within which the controversy arose; Problems faced by the Makah Nation in its attempt to revive its cultural practice of whaling; Ethical objection to Makah whaling; Methods employed by the Makah Nation to whale.

Abstract: This article describes improved techniques to calculate the wind power resource of an offshore area. The method uses publicly available oceanic, environmental and socio-economic data to identify areas less suitable for development due to physical or technical constraints, safety or other hazards, environmental concerns, or competing uses. Using wind speed data from meteorological buoys, annual energy output is calculated for a representative offshore wind turbine. The average power resource is determined by dividing the total available area by a wind regime and the turbine-specific effective turbine footprint, yielding the maximum number of turbines, and then derating the output to account for wake effects and operational availability. These techniques are applied to quantify the previously undocumented offshore wind resource off the coast of Maryland, a U.S. Atlantic coastal state. We consider only the open-ocean Atlantic and not Maryland’s substantial estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. We find that the wind field is fairly uniform, but exclusions of ocean areas due to competing use may be substantial, reducing the energy resource estimate significantly. Nevertheless, we find that even excluding these areas Maryland’s offshore wind resource could supply an annual average of 14,087Megawatts (MWa), or 123,400GWh of energy per year. This is equal to 189% of the state’s annual electricity consumption. Further restricting to only shallower-water foundation technology (monopiles), average power output would still be 70% of electricity demand. We conclude with a discussion of policy options for coastal states. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As wind turbines and the number of wind projects scale throughout the world, a growing number of individuals might be affected by these structures. For some people, wind turbine sounds and their effects on the landscape can be annoying and could even prompt stress reactions. This comparative study analyzed a combined sample of survey respondents from the U.S., Germany and Switzerland. It utilized a newly developed assessment scale (AS-Scale) to reliably characterize these stress-impacted individuals living within populations near turbines. Findings indicate low prevalence of annoyance, stress symptoms and coping strategies. Noise annoyance stress (NAS-Scale) was negatively correlated with the perceptions of a lack of fairness of the wind project's planning and development process, among other subjective variables. Objective indicators, such as the distance from the nearest turbine and sound pressure level modeled for each respondent, were not found to be correlated to noise annoyance. Similar result patterns were found across the European and U.S. samples. • Residents stressed by wind turbines represent a small proportion of the population. • Lower prevalence of stress related annoyance compared to single annoyance assessment. • Experienced planning process related to stress by wind turbine noise, distance not. • Average attitude toward the local wind farm is positive. • Similar result patterns found in the U.S. and European samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the recent emphasis on offshore wind energy Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning (CMSP) has become one of the main frameworks used to plan and manage the increasingly complex web of ocean and coastal uses. As wind development becomes more prevalent, existing users of the ocean space, such as commercial shippers, will be compelled to share their historically open-access waters with these projects. Here, we demonstrate the utility of using cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to support siting decisions within a CMSP framework. In this study, we assume that large-scale offshore wind development will take place in the US Mid-Atlantic within the next decades. We then evaluate whether building projects nearshore or far from shore would be more cost-effective. Building projects nearshore is assumed to require rerouting of the commercial vessel traffic traveling between the US Mid-Atlantic ports by an average of 18.5 km per trip. We focus on less than 1500 transits by large deep-draft vessels. We estimate that over 29 years of the study, commercial shippers would incur an additional $0.2 billion (in 2012$) in direct and indirect costs. Building wind projects closer to shore where vessels used to transit would generate approximately $13.4 billion (in 2012$) in savings. Considering the large cost savings, modifying areas where vessels transit needs to be included in the portfolio of policies used to support the growth of the offshore wind industry in the US., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The waterway network ship traffic, energy, and environment model (STEEM) is applied to geographically characterize energy use and emissions for interport ship movement for North America, including the United States, Canada, and Mexico. STEEM advances existing approaches by (i) estimating emissions for large regions on the basis of nearly complete data describing historical ship movements, attributes, and operating profiles of individual ships, (ii) solving distances on an empirical waterway network for each pair of ports considering ship draft and width constraints, and (iii) allocating emissions on the basis of the most probable routes. We estimate that the 172 000 ship voyages to and from North American ports in 2002 consumed about 47 million metric tonnes of heavy fuel oil and emitted about 2.4 million metric tonnes of SO2. Comparison with port and regional studies shows good agreement in total estimates and better spatial precision than current top-down methods. In quantifying limitations of top-down approaches that assume existing proxies for ship traffic density are spatially representative across larger domains, we find that International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set (ICOADS) proxy data are spatially biased, especially at small scales. Emissions estimated by STEEM for ships within 200 nautical miles of the coastal areas of the United States are about 5 times the emissions estimated in previous studies using cargo as a proxy.