US Offshore Wind Rights Auction Generates Record Bids

WASHINGTON — 

The use of wind to generate electricity for the United States was thrust forward Wednesday with the largest-ever offering by the federal government of offshore development rights.

Bidding for the 197,000 hectares of the New York Bight — an area of shallow waters between the coasts of Long Island (in New York state) and the state of New Jersey — attracted record-setting prices, according to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

“This auction today is a testament to how attractive the U.S. market is,” said Fred Zalcman, director of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance.

Europe is much further along than North America in developing lease areas for offshore wind farms.

There are two small offshore wind facilities in the United States off the coasts of the states of Rhode Island and Virginia. Two more commercial-scale projects were recently approved for development.

“We’re really just at the beginning of a process here. We hope to apply the lessons learned from Europe and take advantage of the cost savings achieved in Europe,” Zalcman told VOA.

Officials say turbines erected in the set of six leases that went up for bidding Wednesday, the first auction conducted during the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, could eventually provide power for nearly 2 million residences.

Wednesday’s top bids totaled more than $1.5 billion. The largest single lease area offered — totaling nearly 51,000 hectares and located about 50 kilometers off the New Jersey coast — had attracted a record-busting $410 million, with bidding to resume Thursday morning.

The previous auction was held in 2018 during the administration of former President Donald Trump. It was considered a success, with three leases off the coast of the state of Massachusetts bringing in a collective record-breaking $405 million for rights to develop 158,000 hectares south of Martha’s Vineyard, with a potential generating capacity of more than 4.1 gigawatts, enough to supply power to about 1.5 million homes.

FILE – Three of Deepwater Wind’s five turbines stand in the water off Block Island, R.I, the nation’s first offshore wind farm on Aug. 15, 2016.

Trump, a Republican, repeatedly expressed, at best, skepticism toward wind as a viable renewable source to supply America’s energy needs. He derided “windmills,” saying he had been told the noise from their blades “causes cancer” and “it’s like a graveyard for birds.”

Biden, a Democrat, has veered in a different direction, embracing wind as part of his clean energy ambitions and setting a goal of 30 gigawatts of capacity in the United States by the year 2030.

In his first week in office in 2021, Biden signed an executive order to expand opportunities for the offshore wind industry, predicting, according to the White House, the projects “will create good-paying union jobs” and “spawn new supply chains that stretch into America’s heartland.”

The area included in the ongoing auction, which began with 25 qualified bidders, was cut back by about one-fourth from what was initially proposed last year due to concerns about the potential impact on commercial fishing and military interests.

State and federal officials, according to Zalcman, have been addressing concerns of other ocean users, including recreational and commercial fishers, navigators and the shipping industry, and taking into consideration visual impacts to coastal communities, and concerns of environmental groups about migratory species, such as the North Atlantic right whale.

A group of residents of the New Jersey summer colony of Long Beach last month sued BOEM over the New York Bight leasing plans, contending the massive wind farm would permanently mar their beautiful view from the beach, hurt the area’s tourism economy and harm property values.

Bob Stern, the president of Save Long Beach Island, told VOA on Wednesday that the organization “is not opposed to offshore wind energy but believes that the federal government’s process of selecting ocean areas for turbine placement is flawed.”

Stern explained that the group’s lawsuit challenges the federal government agency’s selection of “wind energy areas” for offshore wind turbines which “should have been preceded and supported by a structured regional environmental impact statement process with full disclosure of impacts and public input.”

The Sierra Club is terming the New York Bight auction a historic major stride forward for clean energy.

“This lease sale is the first to include stipulations setting out responsibilities for project developers to report on their engagement with stakeholders to minimize conflicting uses, negotiation of project labor agreements, and the development of offshore wind-related manufacturing and supply chain services,” said Allison Considine, a senior campaign representative of the national environmental organization.

A preeminent concern is ensuring that these projects are done responsibly, said Zalcman of the New York Offshore Wind Alliance, of which the Sierra Club is a member.

How developers configure the wind farms will be subject to another rigorous round of environmental review before they are able to erect the huge structures.

The Dutch Schouten, gold and Olympic record in speed skating 3,000 m. | sports

The Dutch Irene Schouten won gold today in the 3,000-meter speed skating event at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games with a mark that also helped her break the Olympic record.

Schouten, with 3 minutes, 56 seconds and 86 tenths, surpassed the mark set by German Claudia Pechstein (3:57.70), unbeaten since the 2002 Salt Lake City Games.

USA overtakes Russia in team figure skating, China breaks record | sports

The United States, with 28 points, took the lead in the provisional team figure skating classification for the Beijing Games, ahead of the favorite Russia, which added 26, after the execution of the first three programs.

China and Japan, with 21 and 20 points, occupy the third and fourth position. In the pairs short program, locals Sui Wenjing and Han Cong broke the world scoring record with a score of 82.83.

Yellowstone Park Visits Hit Record in 2021, Straining Staff

MAMMOTH HOT SPRINGS, WYOMING — 

A record number of visitors flocked to Yellowstone National Park last year despite fewer hotel rooms and campsites being available because of the coronavirus pandemic and construction projects.

About 4.86 million visits were tallied in 2021, breaking the prior record set in 2016. It’s a million more people than visited in 2020.

Known worldwide for its wolves, bears and other wildlife and thermal features such as the Old Faithful geyser, Yellowstone will mark its 150th anniversary in 2022. It straddles the borders of northwestern Wyoming, southern Montana and eastern Idaho.

Visits to national parks across the U.S. have been trending up in recent years. Others such as Utah’s Zion National Park also set new visitor records in 2021 as tourism bounced back from the shutdowns imposed during the early days of the pandemic.

At Yellowstone, a rush of people from May through September last year strained employees and park services. It came as the park was understaffed through the summer because of worker housing caps and difficulty recruiting new employees, park officials have said.

There were also 20% fewer campsites and hotel rooms in 2021 compared to previous years. That meant hundreds of thousands of visitors left the park at night and would re-enter after staying elsewhere. Each time they entered the park counted as a separate visit.

Park officials said they are trying to find a way to differentiate between new visits and people who enter the park multiple times on the same trip.

Yellowstone’s road corridors and parking lots can get crowded, but they make up less than one-tenth of 1% of its 8,903 square kilometers (3,400 square miles) — an area about 150 times the size of New York’s Manhattan Island.

Most visitors stay within a half-mile of those roads, according to park officials. Park crowds drop sharply during winter when much of it is inaccessible except by snowmobile or skiing.

They grow 8% but without record figures due to the pandemic

The pandemic has once again prevented Spain from recovering the record numbers of donations and pre-Covid transplants, but its effect is beginning to be mitigated, remaining a world benchmark: in 2021, 8% more were made than in the previous year.

The Minister of Health, Carolina Darias (l), and the general director of the National Transplant Organization (ONT), Beatriz Domínguez-Gil (r), present the annual balance of donation and transplant activity for 2021. EFE/Javier Lizón

Transplants in Spain in 2021 grow by 8% and continue to be a world benchmark

In 2021, 4,781 transplants were carried out, 8% more than in 2020, thanks to the 2,229 people (40.2 per million population) who gave their organs.

After the drop in transplants last year, Spain recovers the positive trend and remains a world benchmark, doubling the rate of the EU (18.4) or quadrupling that of Germany (10.9), highlighted the Minister of Health , Carolina Darias, in the presentation of the balance of activity of the National Transplant Organization (ONT) together with the general director of the organization, Beatriz Domínguez-Gil.

During the second year of the pandemic, 2,950 kidney, 1,078 liver, 362 lung, 302 heart, 82 pancreas, and 7 intestinal transplants were performed, bringing the rate of donors per million population (pmp) to 101; Living donor kidney transplant activity increased by 25%, with a total of 323 procedures, an activity very similar to that of 2019.

In total, 4,781 transplants, 159 of them children, which were possible thanks to 1,905 deceased donors, with whom the donation rate stood at 40.2 pmp In addition, there were another 324 living donors, 323 of them a kidney and 1 from your liver.

Photograph provided by the La Paz hospital of the first infant lung transplant. EFE

The profile of donors in 2021

The main cause of death for donors is stroke, while those who died in traffic accidents remain very low, just 4.7%. On the other hand, the 35 donors who died from neurodegenerative diseases stand out.

More than half of the people who donated their organs, 53.7%, are over 60 years old, just over a quarter (27.5%) are over 70 and 3.8% are over 80, a lower percentage than in previous years, something that is probably due to the need to be more selective at critical moments of the pandemic. Refusals to donate were 17%.

By communities, Cantabria was once again at the top with a rate of 72.4 donors pmp, followed by Navarra (62.1), Murcia (52.3), Asturias (51.5), the Basque Country (50.7) and Valencian Community (50.3).
At the other extreme are La Rioja (22.6); Madrid (27.1) and Aragon (29.5).

These are figures that do not reach the historical maximums of 2019, when Spain returned to being the leader in transplants and donations for the 27th consecutive year, but they do show a recovery from the ravages of the pandemic, since transplants have recovered 8% in transplant and donations 7% compared to 2020.

Despite the rise, there is still a large number of patients on the waiting list waiting for an organ: as of December 31 there were 4,762, similar to the 4,794 in 2020, according to data on transplants in 2021 from the HAVE.

However, the drop in the children’s list stands out, which that year added 92 children compared to 66 in 2021, a drop caused by the measures adopted by the ONT to facilitate access to pediatric transplantation.

Organs from donors with positive PCR

The protocols deployed for the evaluation and selection of organ donors and recipients have allowed 143 patients to be able to transplant from 61 donors who have passed the covid, six of whom had a positive PCR, which benefited 14 of the transplant recipients.

Domínguez-Gil has valued “the good data” of activity thanks to the adoption of specific measures agreed by the organization and the communities in collaboration with scientific societies, such as the development of protocols for the evaluation and selection of Sars donors and recipients -CoV-2, which have been adapted as the available evidence increased.

This has allowed, after an individualized evaluation, the transplantation of organs from donors who have had the disease, including those who persist with a positive PCR at the time of their death.

“Initially, clinical and microbiological cure was required, but we consider that, based on the available literature, this did not entail a risk for the transplant recipient”, explained its general director, Beatriz Domínguez-Gil, at the presentation of the body’s activity balance. that the possibility that donors can transmit the virus to patients is “remote”.