October 1, 2019 — For years, the mighty wind blowing off the Massachusetts coast has beckoned developers with visions of clean, emission-free electricity. The latest to be seduced, Vineyard Wind LLC, aims to install 84 Statute of Liberty-size turbines about 15 miles off the state’s shoreline, which would together generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes as soon as 2022.
The project hit a snag in August, when the U.S. Department of the Interior ordered additional analysis of how the wind farm—and potentially 14 others that have been granted leases across almost 1.7 million acres of Atlantic waters—would affect the $1.4 billion fishing industry along the Eastern seaboard. U.S. regulators had sought to fast-track Vineyard Wind and could still sign off on the project by their self-imposed deadline in March, but the additional review is a blow to the companies behind Vineyard Wind, Avangrid Inc. and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, which had hoped to begin construction this year.
Analysts predict the U.S. will swiftly catch up with foreign competitors. According to BloombergNEF, even with additional Vineyard Wind scrutiny, the U.S. is on track to become fourth in offshore wind capacity by 2030. The rapid buildout is beyond what anyone expected when Cape Wind was struggling earlier this decade. “There is a gold rush mentality in this right now,” says Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney with the Fisheries Survival Fund, which has battled Equinor’s Empire Wind project. “We’re not saying no. We’re just saying, can we please be wise and realistic in what we are going to develop?”
The Interior Department’s additional environmental scrutiny is critical, Minkiewicz says. Had the government approved Vineyard Wind without deeper analysis of fishing impacts, its opponents would have won an easy victory against it in court. “I get that it’s a renewable energy project, and I get that people are excited about it,” he says, “but would you allow a nuclear reactor or a coal plant to write its own environmental impact statement?”