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VIRGINIA: $223M offshore wind staging area now complete at Portsmouth Marine Terminal

March 14, 2025 — The Virginia Port Authority announced this week that workers have wrapped up a hub for offshore wind equipment at the Portsmouth Marine Terminal.

Skanska began construction in 2022, working to redevelop 72 acres and 1,500 feet of an existing wharf.

“The project presented some challenges,” Stephen Edwards, CEO of the Port Authority, said in a statement Thursday. “But there was a lot of collaboration between the port and Skanska teams that yielded a project, an outcome, that was delivered on-time and on-budget.”

The $223 million project provides capacity for Dominion Energy to gather, store and transfer massive turbines and foundations for its 176-turbine wind farm about 27 miles off the Virginia Beach coast. The turbines are expected to generate 2.6 gigawatts of renewable electricity.

The Port Authority received a $20 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the area under the Biden administration.

In a joint statement at the time, Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said the funding “will go a long way toward establishing Virginia as a hub for offshore wind development along the East Coast.”

Read the full article at WHRO

VIRGINIA: Port Authority to receive $20 million for offshore wind

January 27, 2022 — The Virginia Port Authority will receive a $20 million grant from the Department of Transportation to make improvements to Portsmouth Marine Terminal to turn it into a staging area to support the building of 180 wind turbines 27 to 42 miles off the Virginia Beach coast.

Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine made the announcement Jan. 13 and said in a joint statement that “this funding is a recognition of the Commonwealth’s leadership in this space and will go a long way toward establishing Virginia as a hub for offshore wind development along the East Coast.”

The money came from the Department of Transportation’s Port Infrastructure Development Program, a competitive discretionary grant program run by the Maritime Administration. Warner, Kaine and Rep. Bobby Scott co-signed a letter to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg in support of the port’s grant application.

Read the full story at the Suffolk News-Herald

$200 million wind turbine facility planned for Virginia

October 26, 2021 — Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and executives from Dominion Energy and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy on Monday announced a $200 million project to finish building turbine blades that would harness offshore wind on 80 acres of the Portsmouth Marine Terminal.

A lineup of local, state and federal leaders said the project, the largest in the United States, positioned Virginia at the forefront of developing wind energy. “This puts us a vital step closer to being the leader in offshore wind,” Northam said, adding that in a few short years the state had pivoted from exploring offshore drilling, which would harm the environment, to offshore wind. “Virginia,” he said, “is all in for offshore wind.”

The facility, combined with its operations and maintenance activities, will create 310 new jobs, including 50 service positions to support Dominion’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project 27 miles off the coast. Dominion says the wind farm will generate enough electricity to power up to 660,000 homes at peak and avoid as much as 5 million tons of carbon dioxide being dumped into the atmosphere annually.

Read the full story at the Washington Post