On a chilly June day, with Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts visible on the horizon in the distance, the short, green hull finished driving a steel pole about 100 feet into the Atlantic Ocean.
This marked the beginning of construction of the first mega wind farm on the U.S. coast, a project of a scale that would make a significant contribution to the Northeast power grid.
For some watching from a nearby boat, the driving of the first stake was a 20-year hard-earned milestone. The $4 billion project, known as Vineyard Wind, is expected to start producing electricity by the end of the year.
“This was really hard,” said Rachel Pachter, chief development officer at Vineyard Offshore, the U.S. subsidiary of Danish renewable energy developer Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which co-owners the wind farm. Told. Moving forward with large-scale energy projects at this time near population centers requires clearing a myriad of regulatory hurdles and avoiding potential opposition and lawsuits.
“In New England, we don’t see large-scale infrastructure projects being built anymore, let alone in prominent locations,” she said.
Pachter has seen the difficulty firsthand. Starting as an intern in 2002, just out of college, she worked on a project called “Cape Wind” off the coast of Massachusetts for over a decade. Ultimately, it ultimately fell through, partly because of years of fierce opposition from people like Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who died in 2009, and billionaire William Koch. Vineyard Wind also has some vocal opponents. Some fishermen say the turbines will make fishing jobs nearly impossible.
But Pachter helped organize campaigns for community support, job creation and funding, finally reaching what the industry calls “steel in the water.”
In the next few months, 62 turbines with blades about 350 feet long and up to 850 feet tall (the tallest of any building in Boston) will be on the ocean floor 15 miles from Martha’s Vineyard, where the former president stayed. It will be installed in the area. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton took a vacation.
Cables carrying electricity created by the spinning rotors land on the beaches of Barnstable on Cape Cod and are sent to consumers across the state. Vineyard Wind says its machines produce enough electricity to light his 400,000 homes.
Wind farms are usually built surprisingly quickly once construction begins. Klaus Moller, the Danish chief executive of Vineyard Wind, said he expects the Vineyard Wind company, called ‘Touch Wood’, to be completed next summer.
Things were very different in 2019 when the Trump administration derailed Vineyard Wind’s plans, halting further research after two years and putting the proposal in jeopardy. But the Biden administration wants to make offshore wind a big part of the rapid expansion of renewable energy and related jobs, giving Vineyard Wind the go-ahead for 2021.
Building and installing huge machines at sea is a fairly novel proposition in the United States. There are only a few other small offshore wind farms in the country. Another vessel, about one-fifth the size of Vineyard Wind, is due to go into service off Long Island this year.
There are thousands of offshore turbines in Europe, and much of the expertise and equipment used to build Vineyard Wind, including the specialized ships used to drive the turbine towers into the ocean floor, was sourced from across the Atlantic Ocean. Come.
Wind farm developers also say they are blocked by the Jones Act, a century-old law banning the use of U.S. ports to launch foreign construction ships. To comply, Vineyard Wind plans to unload the turbine components at the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, and transport the assembled machinery locally on U.S.-flagged barges, a process that is costly. takes.
Industry executives and analysts say the construction of the U.S.’s first giant wind farm should help pave the way for similar plans.
“If they can get this to work, there’s a way out,” said Dan Reicher, a former Clinton assistant energy secretary and adviser on the California proposal.
In fact, according to consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, a series of wind farms are planned that could be about 75 times the size of Vineyard Wind’s production capacity. About 80 percent of this area is off the east coast.
For Christian Skackebeck, founder of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, the east coast “is in many ways similar to the North Sea, with shallow seabeds, sandy bottoms and high wind speeds.”
Vineyard Wind executives like Mr. Pachter are working on other wind farms, including another wind farm near Vineyard Wind, a second district off New York, and a third west coast district off Humboldt County in northern California. It is shifting its interest to wind power projects.
The company acquired the Vineyard Wind site from wealth management giant Blackstone in 2016. Skakkevek said the company decided to bring in a partner from the United States and turned to Avangrid, the U.S. subsidiary of Spanish power giant Iberdrola.
Vineyard Wind has its critics, but the opposition is not as strong as it fought Cape Wind. One reason is visibility. The project is offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, with Cape Wind located between Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and another island, Nantucket. Once built, the top of the turbine will be nearly invisible from the island, according to the company.
Massachusetts, too, said early on developers took concerns such as the protection of endangered whales seriously. “They took these things to heart, mitigated what they could, and came up with a fairly responsible project,” said Andrew Gottlieb, director of the Cape Cod Conservation Society, an environmental advocacy group.
Some islands and towns along the Massachusetts coast have seen economic benefits from vineyard winds. The town of Barnstable opposed Cape Wind and sought to become a landing point for cables from Vineyard Wind. The profit will be a $16 million payment and help build a new sewer system, saving taxpayers millions of dollars, said town administrator Mark Ells.
The company also said a turbine maintenance center at Martha’s Vineyard will create 90 full-time jobs. This is a significant number for a holiday destination that primarily provides summer jobs for residents.
“Having 90 full-time jobs available year-round is really big for the island,” said Dylan Fernandez, the island’s representative in the Massachusetts legislature.
Meanwhile, many of the manufacturing jobs that offshore wind could create in the United States have yet to materialize. The turbines are supplied by General Electric, but the cabin-like structures called nacelles that house the gears and electronics are manufactured in France. The first blades are shipped from our factory in Canada. GE has announced that it will build two factories in New York if it receives enough orders.
Among the opponents of offshore wind power, fishing groups stand out. Industry officials say the turbines are impeding their ability to catch fish and that the Washington government did not fully consult with them when signing leases. They fear coastlines dotted with wind farms.
“Vineyard Wind is the first of many projects that could wipe out commercial fishing on the U.S. East Coast,” said Megan Rapp, fisheries manager for Seafree’s Shoreside, a fishing company based in Point Judith, Rhode Island. It belongs to .
Rapp said the wind farm site is a prime summer location for squid, which makes up a large part of the company’s business. He said squid netting boats would not be able to fish safely between the wheels, and the huge structure would interfere with radar and endanger their safety.
Vineyard Wind is trying to ease the fishing industry by chartering boats to patrol construction areas and providing about $40 million in potentially lost catch. But Seafreeze and others have sued to stop Vineyard Wind’s lease, accusing the federal government of ignoring its own environmental rules in the race to secure renewable energy.
But for now, offshore wind and the vast amount of clean energy it promises seem to be on track.
“Just building a project makes a big difference,” says Pachter.
