Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Mayflower Wind Claims Effects of Buried Cable Under Sakonnet River Would be Minimal

August 19, 2022 — An offshore wind developer assured Aquidneck Island residents Tuesday night they would experience minimal disruptions from a proposal to bury an export cable along Boyds Lane into Mount Hope Bay.

The project is part of a proposed wind facility by Mayflower Wind LLC in a leased area roughly 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. According to the company’s proposal, the offshore development would contain 149 positions for wind turbines and substations, and generate 2,400 megawatts of renewable energy — enough to power 800,000 New England homes.

But there’s a twist: Mayflower Wind is asking to bury one of two export cables under the Sakonnet River riverbed, and residents expressed concern during a well-attended public hearing held Aug. 16 online over possible impacts to fish habitat, boat and car traffic, and existing recreational uses of the river.

Transmission development manager Lawrence Mott assured residents any impacts would be minimal.

Read the full article at Eco Ri News

Massachusetts doubles offshore wind in power pipeline

December 20, 2021 — The amount of offshore wind power in the Massachusetts pipeline is poised to roughly double with the selection Friday of projects from both Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind to cumulatively generate 1,600 megawatts of cleaner power for the Bay State by the end of this decade.

A group of utility executives working with assistance from the Baker administration was seeking 1,600 MW more of offshore wind power but got just two bids that each maxed out at 1,200 MW and came only from the two developers already under contract to deliver offshore wind power to Massachusetts. So instead of picking just one 1,200 MW project, the group selected Vineyard Wind’s roughly 1,200 MW Commonwealth Wind proposal and supplemented it with a 400 MW project offered by Mayflower Wind.

Both developers are already working on roughly 800 MW projects for Massachusetts. Vineyard Wind I, the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the nation, is in the very early stages of construction and is due to come online by the end of 2023. Mayflower Wind’s initial 804 MW project just began its federal review process and is expected to be up and running in 2025.

“These projects will double the size of our current offshore wind procurements, they will deliver significant economic benefits to a number of coastal communities across the commonwealth, they include important provisions for diversity, equity and inclusion as well as benefits to environmental justice communities, and they invest significantly in the state while balancing protections with environmental resources including fisheries,” Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Kathleen Theoharides told the News Service on Friday.

Read the full story at WGBH

 

Wind project beginning lengthy environmental review

October 29, 2021 — The federal environmental review process for Mayflower Wind will officially get underway next week, kicking off a two-year period in which regulators and others will scrutinize the plan for up to 147 turbines in a lease area capable of supporting multiple projects.

The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said Thursday that it will publish a notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) in the Federal Register on Nov. 1, and will hold public comment meetings on Nov. 10, 15 and 18 to accept input on what BOEM should focus on when reviewing Mayflower’s construction and operations plan.

That comment period will end Dec. 1. Mayflower Wind, the Shell and Ocean Winds North America joint venture, was selected unanimously by Massachusetts utility executives in 2019 to build and operate an 804-megawatt wind farm about 20 nautical miles south of the western end of Nantucket.

Read the full story at WHDH 7 News Boston

 

Big Oil wants to be Big Wind. Can fossil fuel companies be trusted?

October 18, 2021 — Danielle Jensen spent two years working on Mars — not the planet, the offshore oil rig.

Her job was to keep the crude flowing for Royal Dutch Shell. She operated the platform’s pumps and compressors, clocking two-week shifts with a mostly male crew.

Workdays were long, and walking around in a flame-retardant suit all summer in the Gulf of Mexico was brutal. But she felt good about providing energy to the world — modern society was built on fossil fuels, after all.

Times are changing, though, and Jensen wants to be part of the future. When Shell posted a job for planning an offshore wind farm off Massachusetts, she leapt at the opportunity. She now lives in Boston and works for Mayflower Wind, a joint venture of Shell and two European utilities.

“Once we get a few of these big projects installed and powering people’s homes, I think it’ll be unstoppable,” she says.

Jensen is the rare energy worker who has stepped from a carbon-intensive industry into one with almost no emissions at all. Her move mirrors a wider energy transition. Shell is among a handful of large oil companies racing to enter the offshore wind market, banking that their experience with ocean drilling can turn them into clean energy giants.

Read the full story at WBUR

MASSACHUSETTS: Biggest offshore wind procurement draws just 2 bids

September 27, 2021 — The two companies already chosen to develop offshore wind projects for Massachusetts were the only two to submit proposals for the state’s third offshore wind solicitation, each offering up to 1,200 megawatts of power generation and various economic development-related sweeteners.

The state’s third competitive solicitation attracted bids from just Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind, a smaller pool of bids than House Speaker Ron Mariano and others were hoping for. Both developers submitted bids that maxed out at 1,200 MW of capacity, 25 percent short of the 1,600 MW upper limit that the state’s solicitation sought but still 50 percent more than either project currently under development.

Though key details like the price of the cleaner power and the number of turbines planned remain under wraps until later stages of the selection process, the two developers vying for the work outlined Thursday what they think are the benefits of their bids.

If one of its multiple proposals is chosen, Mayflower Wind said it would set up an operations and maintenance port in Fall River and spend up to $81 million for supply chain support, training and education, port investments, and diversity and inclusion programs on the South Coast.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Baker, guvs urge Biden to keep offshore wind a priority

June 7, 2021 — Gov. Charlie Baker and governors from eight other states poised to benefit environmentally and economically from the emerging offshore wind sector sent President Joe Biden a letter on Friday outlining their thoughts and recommendations for keeping the momentum going in the fledgling field.

Biden’s administration has moved quickly to advance offshore wind projects, namely the Vineyard Wind I project that last month got the federal go-ahead it had been waiting about two years to receive, and Baker’s administration has cheered the president’s swift action.

Vineyard Wind, which is expected to deliver 800 megawatts of wind-generated power to Massachusetts by 2023, is on track to be the first utility-scale offshore wind farm in the United States. Mayflower Wind, an 804-MW project, is also under contract to deliver power to Massachusetts. And an upcoming state solicitation seeks a project of up to 1,600 MW that can come online by the end of the decade.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Following Vineyard Wind’s final approval, Mayflower Wind is next up seeking permits

May 20, 2021 — Last week’s federal approval of Vineyard Wind’s first-in-the-nation project was hailed as the start of the offshore wind era — and the project that moves up in the state’s queue is introducing itself to more residents as it prepares for its own turn under the microscope.

Mayflower Wind, the Shell and Ocean Winds North America joint venture, selected unanimously by Massachusetts utility executives in 2019 to build and operate an 804-megawatt wind farm about 20 miles south of Nantucket, held the first in a series of virtual open houses Tuesday night to explain its project and answer questions from residents.

The second offshore wind farm to secure a contract with Bay State utilities, Mayflower Wind expects to get the state and federal permitting ball rolling in 2022, with the wind farm scheduled to be in operation by mid-December 2025.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Dutch Group Expands Support of U.S. Offshore Wind

December 17, 2020 — A European company considered a leader in the offshore wind sector has signed on to help develop a major project off the Massachusetts coast. Ventolines, a Dutch company that worked on the first commercial U.S. offshore wind project, on Dec. 16 announced it has opened a U.S. office and will support construction of the Mayflower Wind installation.

Mayflower Wind is a planned 804-MW offshore wind project about 30 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, and 23 miles south of Nantucket. The project, expected to come online in 2025, already has power purchase agreements with Massachusetts utilities. The installation is a joint venture of Shell New Energies and Ocean Winds, which is the global offshore wind collaboration between ENGIE and EDP Renewables.

“We are proud to be part of the team bringing more wind farms and sustainable energy to the U.S.,” said Thibaut de Groen, Ventolines’ Director of Contracting and Construction, on Wednesday. Ventolines supervised the installation of wind turbines and advised on asset management for the 30-MW Block Island wind farm (Figure 1) off the Rhode Island coast, which came online in 2017 and was the first U.S. offshore wind project.

Read the full story at Power Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford about to become hub for offshore wind

August 24, 2020 — New Bedford is about to become home to the first port in North America built specifically for the staging and installation of offshore wind projects.

The state has announced lease agreements with Vineyard Wind and Mayflower Wind at the facility from 2023 to 2027, and are worth more than $32.5 million.

“These are the two first projects that Massachusetts is involved in and they’re going to be staged their construction project from New Bedford,” New Bedford Port Authority Director Edward Anthes-Washburn said.

The two 800 megawatt offshore wind projects will be over 15 miles off the East Coast, but the turbines and equipment needed to build them will be set up at the New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal, a 9-acre plot of remediated tideland that was filled in for this purpose.

Read the full story at WPRI

Coast Guard backs wind industry on turbine layout

June 1, 2020 — The offshore wind power industry cleared one of its last remaining bureaucratic hurdles Wednesday with the release of a long-awaited report from the Coast Guard that essentially agrees with an industry proposal on turbine layout.

The Coast Guard’s Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study has concluded that turbines should be spaced 1.2 miles apart and oriented in the same direction across seven offshore wind lease areas totaling around 1,400 square miles south of Nantucket.

Concerned with vessel safety and the ability to maneuver while fishing, some fishermen and industry groups sought larger lanes, as wide as 4 miles, to transit to fishing grounds, but the five wind power companies holding the leases said that would force them to crowd turbines outside the travel lanes, making it less safe to navigate and fish.

The offshore wind leaseholders — Equinor, Mayflower Wind, Orsted/Eversource and Vineyard Wind — had been concerned that some of the layouts proposed by other stakeholders could reduce the number of turbines and power generation. The increasing efficiency and power capacity of newer turbines have alleviated some of that concern.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times