Public feedback process for decision on offshore wind port a charade, environmentalists claim - Courier-Gazette & Camden Herald
Public feedback process for decision on offshore wind port a charade, environmentalists claim | Maritime | knox.villagesoup.com
Environmentalists are decrying a year-long process meant to gather public feedback on where to build a deepwater offshore wind port, calling it a “charade.”
They say state officials failed to adequately engage the public or tribal communities and effectively decided where to construct the port long before the process began.
A still from a video shot by Rolf Olsen of Friends of Sears Island shows the island in its entirety.
A screenshot from a report by Moffat & Nichol depicting the different types of foundations for floating wind turbines, which are designed to be anchored to the sea floor with cables.
Graphic from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Related Knowledge Center: Offshore wind energy
Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.