Press & Media

Going big on offshore wind – but not in Nantucket Sound

Boston Herald: “Going Big on Wind Power”
By Marie Szaniszlo, December 22, 2018 –

After a groundswell of opposition ultimately doomed Cape Wind’s plan to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound, something stunning happened this month: Eleven developers vied for three tracts of ocean off Massachusetts’ coast in a two-day bidding war that resulted in the highest-grossing offshore wind sale lease ever.

The winners — New Bedford-based Vineyard Wind, the Norwegian company Equinor and Mayflower Wind, a joint venture owned by Shell and EDP Renewables — each paid $135 million for the right to build some of the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farms, which the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says, together, could produce enough energy to power more than 1.5 million homes.

The American Wind Energy Association called it a “record-smashing auction,” noting the previous record for a single lease area was a $42.5 million bid from Equinor, which was known then as Statoil, in a 2016 lease auction in New York.

“To anyone who doubted that our ambitious vision for energy dominance would not include renewables, today we put that rumor to rest,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. (Zinke is stepping down from his post at the end of the year.)

Driving the new competition was a 2016 state law requiring electric companies to solicit 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind, according to House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and state Rep. Thomas Golden, co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy. This year, they directed a state energy agency to study the potential gains of even doubling that amount.

Vineyard Wind already is building an offshore wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard on a site it leased in May for 800 megawatts. The company won the contracts by agreeing to sell its energy for one-third of the price that Cape Wind had asked for years ago.

Partly because the 390,000 acres of federal waters auctioned off this month also are nearly 20 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, the winners thus far aren’t facing the kind of fierce opposition that mired Cape Wind in lawsuits for years.

“Nantucket Sound was just the wrong location for an industrial wind farm,” said Audra Parker, president and CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. “Cape Wind came in and totally ignored all the stakeholder conflicts. They looked at their own self-interests without looking at the impacts on fisherman, on tribes, on property owners. That’s what led to 15-plus years of a protracted legal battle, which ultimately led to Cape Wind’s demise and their decision to surrender their lease at the end of last year.”

Part of the problem, Parker said, was that no federal agency had the authority to convey property rights for offshore wind until 2005, when the Department of the Interior was given that role.

In 2010, the department announced a “Smart from the Start” initiative to facilitate siting, leasing and construction of new wind projects. State-federal task forces began identifying areas with both bountiful wind and — a key change — fewer potential environmental and use conflicts than other offshore areas, Parker said.

Jack Clarke, director of public policy for Mass Audubon, said the organization helped select the three tracts of ocean that the Interior Department auctioned off this month.

“Environmental review is years away, but we would be very involved in that process as well,” Clarke said. “We would make sure the wind farms are not built in the migratory paths of birds and sea turtles, or during migration season, when construction noise would bother the whales.”

After a groundswell of opposition ultimately doomed Cape Wind’s plan to build a wind farm in Nantucket Sound, something stunning happened this month: Eleven developers vied for three tracts of ocean off Massachusetts’ coast in a two-day bidding war that resulted in the highest-grossing offshore wind sale lease ever.

The winners — New Bedford-based Vineyard Wind, the Norwegian company Equinor and Mayflower Wind, a joint venture owned by Shell and EDP Renewables — each paid $135 million for the right to build some of the country’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farms, which the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management says, together, could produce enough energy to power more than 1.5 million homes.

The American Wind Energy Association called it a “record-smashing auction,” noting the previous record for a single lease area was a $42.5 million bid from Equinor, which was known then as Statoil, in a 2016 lease auction in New York.

“To anyone who doubted that our ambitious vision for energy dominance would not include renewables, today we put that rumor to rest,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. (Zinke is stepping down from his post at the end of the year.)

Driving the new competition was a 2016 state law requiring electric companies to solicit 1,600 megawatts of offshore wind, according to House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and state Rep. Thomas Golden, co-chairman of the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy. This year, they directed a state energy agency to study the potential gains of even doubling that amount.

Vineyard Wind already is building an offshore wind farm south of Martha’s Vineyard on a site it leased in May for 800 megawatts. The company won the contracts by agreeing to sell its energy for one-third of the price that Cape Wind had asked for years ago.

Partly because the 390,000 acres of federal waters auctioned off this month also are nearly 20 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, the winners thus far aren’t facing the kind of fierce opposition that mired Cape Wind in lawsuits for years.

“Nantucket Sound was just the wrong location for an industrial wind farm,” said Audra Parker, president and CEO of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound. “Cape Wind came in and totally ignored all the stakeholder conflicts. They looked at their own self-interests without looking at the impacts on fisherman, on tribes, on property owners. That’s what led to 15-plus years of a protracted legal battle, which ultimately led to Cape Wind’s demise and their decision to surrender their lease at the end of last year.”

Part of the problem, Parker said, was that no federal agency had the authority to convey property rights for offshore wind until 2005, when the Department of the Interior was given that role.

In 2010, the department announced a “Smart from the Start” initiative to facilitate siting, leasing and construction of new wind projects. State-federal task forces began identifying areas with both bountiful wind and — a key change — fewer potential environmental and use conflicts than other offshore areas, Parker said.

Jack Clarke, director of public policy for Mass Audubon, said the organization helped select the three tracts of ocean that the Interior Department auctioned off this month.

“Environmental review is years away, but we would be very involved in that process as well,” Clarke said. “We would make sure the wind farms are not built in the migratory paths of birds and sea turtles, or during migration season, when construction noise would bother the whales.”

https://www.bostonherald.com/2018/12/22/going-big-on-wind-power/

 

 

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