June 12, 2020 — A new environmental assessment of offshore wind power projects issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management could lead to stricter conditions for developers seeking to build new facilities off the Northeast coast.
BOEM’s new supplement to the draft environmental assessment for the Vineyard Wind facility, planned off the coast of Massachusetts, found the project posed potentially “major” adverse impacts to sea life and other industries, particularly commercial fishing.
The document is an update to the draft Environmental Impact Statement for Vineyard that BOEM issued in 2018. Last year, the agency announced it would extend the permitting process for the 800 MW facility so it could assess the impacts not just of that wind farm, but others planned by Northeastern states to meet clean energy targets.
The report released Tuesday assesses an array of construction scenarios for Vineyard and 22 gigawatts of other facilities planned in New England waters. It considers the creation of a transit lane for fishing and other sea traffic, as well as changes to the project’s turbine layout and the siting of a substation to connect the project to the onshore power grid.