The Committee for the Regional Assessment of Offshore Wind Development in Nova Scotia will be submitting their final report by Jan. 23 to the Ministers of Environment and Climate Change Canada, Energy and Natural Resources Canada, and Nova Scotia Natural Resources and Renewables.
A 479-page draft final report was released by the Committee on Oct. 31 and was available for public comment until December 20, 2024.
“The report did address some of the points we raised in our submission but at the same time it really didn’t,” said Kris Vascotto, manager of the Nova Scotia Fisheries Alliance for Energy Engagement (NSFAEE), a group of 22 fishing associations who have a shared vision of the seafood sector and the offshore energy sector co-existing.
The report did acknowledge some very important pieces, such as needing to avoid development in those areas close to shore that are heavily fished, said Vascotto.
“It also identified the need of a full assessment of all parcels, an impact assessment. It also identified the need for some royalty funded reserves for the future. Those pieces were really positive takeaways. At the same time, a real assessment of how the fishery will be impacted and it kind of completely ignored the larger landscape, the impact that harvesting wind energy might have on the ocean, the ecosystem, the fishery, the community it supports. For us that really represented a major gap that couldn’t be ignored. It was a major part of the conversation we had when the alliance met on Nov. 8 to discuss the draft final report,” said Vascotto.
“A direct impact, you can’t fish here, versus there might not be a resource for us to be able to fish depending on what happens as time moves forward.”
Vascotto said the alliance had a few concerns with the report, including the narrow scope as it relates to the fisheries and some of the recommendations for the development.
“The imbalances are a little bit concerning, especially with intensive activities in some of those areas they decided to expand… also some concern with some of the recommendations they made. There’s 30 plus recommendations. They are pretty broad ranging but some holes and gaps that need to be looked at. We’re looking forward to discussing with the committee in the coming weeks.”
Vascotto said the alliance will also be submitting a written brief.
“We had some good discussions with the members and have been working with stakeholders to make sure we have it all right. We’re going to communicate our constructive input directly to the committee, then will follow up with written piece that will include a path forward and major challenges that we have identified. The real hope here is our collective input will be acknowledged and strongly considered into the future. This is a big project and a big program. It really is imperative for them to get it right off the gate if they can. We don’t have a lot of runway left before we start giving tenure out in the ocean.”
The committee has identified eight potential development areas for offshore wind, including Sydney Bight, Middle Bank, French Bank, Sable Island Bank, Emerald Bank, Canso Bank, LaHave Basin and Misaine Bank.
In the draft final report, the potential development areas were modified from the interim report released in March, said Vascotto. “Some areas were made bigger on the request of some agencies that were commenting on it and they added a couple of completely new sites including the LaHave Basin which is a major silver hake fishing area.”
Vascotto said the areas the committee have identified “will be the focal point when we start talking tenure next year. This draft report will be finalized in January. At that point the province and the feds are going to be selecting wind energy areas and those are what are going to be given to Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Energy Regulators for the call for bids in the tenure process. Those wind energies might be different than what is identified in the regional assessment report.”
Vascotto said he expects the first call for bids will come in the third quarter of 2025.
“One of the pieces we looked at and had concerns with, the regional assessment committee said don’t incur the concept of compensation during the call for bids process. As a fishing industry, they need to understand how fishing activities are being done. One of the great challenges that we noticed within this report is that information on the fishing activity was really pretty thin. They talked a lot about co-location with fisheries but didn’t offer any examples of what co-location would be or what it looks like in other jurisdictions. What we know we would have to fish with shorter trawl lines for halibut, single pot traps as opposed to trawls for lobster, we can’t use bottom contact gear. It impacts your fishing power which impacts your actual economic return on your fishery which determines whether it’s actually viable or not, something that didn’t seem to be given any due course within the regional assessment report itself. That caused a lot of consternation among the stakeholders. They don’t understand how we fish in the first place in some of these areas. For major
stakeholders that are going to be impacted by this, that was a pretty glaring deficiency.”
