Category Archives: Offshore Wind

The Biden-Harris Administration announced several major policy actions for offshore wind in the last week, including a new effort to strengthen regional collaboration and address high priority domestic supply chain gaps and a transmission strategy to unlock offshore wind resources in the Atlantic. These actions represent the latest steps by the Biden-Harris administration to drive long-term growth of the American offshore wind industry and “bring the nation’s first major offshore wind projects online in the near-term and achieve the goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030.”

While the announcement correctly notes that “American workers across manufacturing,… More

On August 15, 2023, ISO New England (ISO-NE) presented preliminary results for an extended timeframe through Winter 2032 as the next phase in its ongoing exploration of potential resource adequacy impacts during extreme winter weather that may occur as a result of expected retirements of existing, mostly fossil fuel, generators and the potential retirement of the Everett Marine Terminal, a liquefied natural gas (“LNG”) facility serving New England. … More

Early this afternoon, Governor Janet Mills signed into law LD 1895, legislation directing the state to procure up to 3 GW of offshore wind by 2040. The final version of the procurement bill emerged after several weeks of negotiations between the Governor, legislature, industry, fisheries interests, labor groups, and environmental advocates. Now that the bill is signed into law, Maine is the seventh U.S. state to pursue a competitive solicitation of offshore wind energy.… More

In This Issue:

Offshore Wind Is Here
Not too long ago, before the Biden-Harris administration, many of us asked ourselves whether offshore wind would ever become a reality in the United States. Today, we have two projects under construction having reached major milestones, with large scale components arriving at the port of New Bedford for Vineyard Wind 1, a project under contract in Massachusetts, and “steel in the water” at the South Fork wind project,… More

Last week, actions by the Second Department of the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division set the tone for offshore wind development in New York by denying a challenge brought by local opponents to the NY Public Service Commission’s (“NYPSC”) grant of a Certificate of Environmental Compatibility and Public Need (“CECPN”) for the transmission line needed to interconnect New York State’s first offshore wind project, South Fork Wind,… More

This was a big week for offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine. BOEM advanced two offshore wind leasing processes in the Gulf of Maine by announcing a Call for Information and Nominations for commercial development and a Notice of Intent to prepare an environmental assessment for the State of Maine’s proposed research lease.

And while these two BOEM actions are the focus of this piece, recent legislative activity in Maine should also be noted.… More

Four New England States – Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island – recently submitted a concept paper to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) proposing to build up to three new high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines and related onshore system upgrades to support the injection of new offshore wind resources in New England.

Onshore and offshore transmission constraints are a major barrier to the successful deployment of large-scale offshore wind along the Atlantic coast.… More

The State of Maine recently published the final version of its Maine Offshore Wind Roadmap, sending a strong market signal that the state is increasingly ready for commercial-scale floating offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine. The Roadmap, which I first wrote about in November, makes a series of recommendations to advance commercial scale-floating offshore wind in Maine, including that the state establish an offshore wind procurement target and strategy (“coordinated regionally to achieve cost effective deployment”) prior to BOEM’s lease sale in the Gulf of Maine,… More

The State of Maine is expected to release the Maine Offshore Wind Roadmap in early 2023, and the global offshore wind industry should be watching. Preliminary details from the state’s roadmap—the focus of this post—clearly indicate that Maine is preparing to seize the significant opportunity presented by the Gulf of Maine offshore wind resource.

Maine’s offshore wind energy potential is ranked seventh in the nation, with more than 411 TWh/yr of offshore resource-generating potential.… More

On November 4, 2022, the White House announced a new initiative to support research and development projects on 37 “game-changing” technologies to advance the Biden Administration’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

Led by an interagency working group, the “Net-Zero Game Changers Initiative” will direct billions of dollars under the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS and Science Act,… More

Late last week, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries division released a draft joint strategy that addresses North Atlantic Right Whales and offshore wind. The deadline to submit public comment on the draft strategy is December 2, 2022.

According to the notice for public comment, the draft strategy:

“does not define new policy or regulatory actions;… More

On August 7, 2022 the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act – a sweeping piece of budget reconciliation legislation that touches on everything from energy and climate to Medicaid prescription prices.  Germane to the energy and climate sector, the Act includes $369 billion for spending on “energy security and climate change” over the next ten years and an additional $250 billion in additional authority for the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. … More

On July 7, 2022, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) released two detailed Requests for Information (RFI) that preview sweeping updates to its large-scale renewable energy certificate (REC) purchase and sale programs. The changes reflect both NYSERDA’s efforts to keep up with changes in applicable law and fast-evolving market rules and its continuing endeavor to increase the maturity of projects proposed. Turnaround for responses to the RFIs is fast – NYSERDA seeks replies from stakeholders by July 28 at 3 PM.… More

Electric transmission planning processes have not been able to keep pace with demand for interconnection service, leaving over 1,000 gigawatts (GW) of generation and 400 GW of storage stranded in the nation’s interconnection queues. In response to the backlog, PJM Interconnection LLC—the nation’s largest RTO by load served—recently imposed a two-year pause on new interconnection requests and asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to consider reforms to its interconnection process.… More

The ocean covers 71% of the planet and holds nearly 97% of the Earth’s water, and about 40% of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometers of the coastline. As reported in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, “[t]he ocean is essential for all aspects of human well-being and livelihood” and ocean warming,… More

Today, January 12, 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that on February 23, 2022 it will hold a wind energy lease auction for six areas in the New York Bight (NY Bight), the coastal area between Long Island and the New Jersey coast. BOEM’s issuance of the Final Sale Notice (FSN) for the wind energy lease areas comes just days after New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced in her State of the State address that the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) will issue its next offshore wind solicitation following BOEM’s lease sale in the NY Bight.… More

As President Biden announces his blueprint for expanding the use of offshore wind (OSW) power, Massachusetts hopes to become an industry hub. Those plans will certainly be facilitated by the new federal OSW policies.

On March 29, the Biden administration published a major plan to mobilize offshore wind development, particularly along the East Coast. The plan aims to construct 30,000 megawatts of OSW generation by 2030,… More

In January, when Governor Baker vetoed the Legislature’s effort to go big on climate, my colleague Zach Gerson made clear that the bill was not even “mostly dead.”  I am pleased to say that Zach’s diagnosis was correct.  The climate bill is very much alive.

Last week, the Legislature passed a new version of the bill, which adopted most of the Governor’s technical suggestions and almost none of his substantive changes. … More