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The Boston Globe: Massachusetts and Rhode Island Announce New Round of Wind Farms, Smaller Than They Had Hoped

Posted by Jon Chesto on Sep 6, 2024

The Boston Globe discusses the recent developments in offshore wind farms in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, highlighting the significant investment and progress being made by both states to expand their offshore wind capacity, enhance renewable energy sources, and reduce carbon emissions. In the article, United's Kat Burnham praised the efforts made by Governor Healy administration in Massachusetts to support new wind farm projects.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island officials announced Friday the newest offshore wind winners in the biggest contest yet in New England for contracts to build these massive projects, but the total energy procurements fell far short of what state officials had hoped to line up.

Three offshore wind farm projects, all planned for waters south of Martha’s Vineyard, won the rights to contracts to provide 2,700 megawatts to Massachusetts ratepayers — enough to serve one-fifth of the state’s electricity demand, or roughly 1.4 million homes.

“We need more power,” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said in a press conference. “We can do that by continuing with fossil fuels, which we know cause a lot of harm ... or we can go in the direction of renewables and clean energy.”

These new contracts would be divided among SouthCoast Wind (owned by the Ocean Winds joint venture), New England Wind 1 (Avangrid’s former Park City Wind), and Vineyard Wind 2 (developed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners). Massachusetts officials had hoped to procure up to 3,600 megawatts in this round. SouthCoast Wind also won the rights to provide 200 megawatts to Rhode Island ratepayers, also much less than what Rhode Island officials had sought.

Missing in action: Connecticut, where the cost of electricity has become a hot-button political issue. The three states worked together on these contracts, but Connecticut officials said Friday that they’re still evaluating the bids.

For Massachusetts, this represents the fourth round of state-orchestrated contests for offshore wind contracts, which developers use to line up financing for the projects. However, it’s essentially a redo of rounds two and three, in which SouthCoast Wind and Avangrid emerged victorious. Those contracts were later scrapped after the developers realized they could not meet the agreed-upon financial terms, following a sharp run-up in interest rates and supply costs. State officials said they expect to go out to bid for more offshore wind power in 2025.

Crucial information about the costs to build these projects and the impact on Massachusetts ratepayers will not become public until wintertime.

State officials in the Northeast have been aggressively pursuing offshore wind power as one way to shift the electricity grid away from power plants fueled by natural gas and oil. But those efforts hit major snags during the past two years amid high inflation and borrowing costs, and previously agreed-upon contracts had to be scrapped.

So far, construction has begun on only three large-scale wind farms off the New England coast: Vineyard Wind 1 (serving Massachusetts), the recently completed South Fork Wind (for New York), and Revolution Wind (for Rhode Island and Connecticut). Construction on the Vineyard Wind project was temporarily suspended in July after one of the already installed blades, manufactured by GE Vernova, fell apart and sent debris into the ocean and onto nearby beaches. A much smaller project with five turbines opened in 2016 off of Block Island.

The Healey administration pointed to other factors driving the push to develop offshore wind.

Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll cited economic benefits for port cities such as New Bedford, where state officials are expanding a terminal for turbine construction, and her hometown of Salem, where another offshore wind terminal is under construction on a site where a coal-fired plant once stood. And Energy Secretary Rebecca Tepper said power from wind and solar sources, coupled with battery storage, will help with grid reliability and fuel-price volatility.

Environmental and industry advocates hailed the Healey administration’s effort, saying it’s an important step forward for clean energy in the region.

“Like any emerging industry, there will be ups and downs,” said Kat Burnham, with clean-energy trade group Advanced Energy United. “I count it as a success.”

Fishing interests, though, remain worried that they will be crowded out. Annie Hawkins of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance said she’s concerned that fisheries’ mitigation measures haven’t been worked into the costs, and that bidding is proceeding before more work is done on existing wind projects, including addressing the broken blade situation at Vineyard Wind.

“We’re already seeing a lot of things that are hard for fishermen to deal with,” Hawkins said. “We should be building some projects first, and then learning the lessons.”

Read the full article here.

Topics: United In The News, Kat Burnham, Offshore Wind, Massachusetts, Rhode Island