By Michael Kuser

BOSTON — A New England offshore wind conference held last week couldn’t have been timelier: It came just a week after the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management announced when it plans to rule on the permit for Vineyard Wind.

BOEM pegged Dec. 18 for its final decision on the project off Massachusetts — a timeline the company said makes its plan to start commercial operation of the facility in 2022 impossible.

The agency, which had been expected to give its thumbs-up last year, surprised the industry in August by delaying its decision in order to expand its study of cumulative environmental impacts. (See Renewable Backers Decry Vineyard Wind Delay.)

But the tone was upbeat Friday when 130 people gathered at an Environmental Business Council of New England (EBCNE) conference to hear the latest from more than a dozen offshore wind officials and industry representatives. Here is some of what we heard.

What to Expect from BOEM

Michelle Morin, of BOEM’s Office of Renewable Energy, described what the industry can expect from the agency this year as it moves toward the common goal of getting “the first steel in federal waters.”

“We’re really looking forward to taking advantage of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, just like we did with the Block Island wind farm, to study and get real-time data as the facility’s being constructed … instead of just relying on modeled or predictive data,” Morin said, referring to a 12-MW test project managed by Dominion Energy and expected to be operational at the end of this year.

Morin said BOEM’s mission is to make the offshore wind energy lease areas available for “expeditious and orderly development” and hailed the half-billion dollars earned from auctions so far and the 15 lease areas under development.

The agency has heard industry calls for predictable schedules, “and we’re taking an ever more regional approach to that,” Morin said. She noted that “everyone is eagerly awaiting our announcement of wind energy areas in the [New York] Bight. … We’re still very hopeful that will occur this year.”

BOEM is now reviewing six construction and operations plans (COPs) representing 5 GW of total capacity, with each calling for a separate environmental impact statement (EIS). The agency this summer expects to publish the draft EIS for the South Fork project off Long Island and to kick off EIS development for the other projects, Morin said.

BOEM expects to receive an additional six COPs in the next 12 months, she said.

Regional Approach

Morin noted that in December, the agency launched its Gulf of Maine Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force with the participation of Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire “to facilitate information gathering among federal, state and tribal governments to inform the wind energy leasing process.”

She said BOEM will keep pursuing that process and “also look to take advantage of other events in the area, such as the upcoming Maine Fishermen’s Forum.” The agency is also processing applications for regional transmission in both the Mid- and North Atlantic.

Vineyard Wind will be the first big project for the agency. If approved, it will represent a joint decision by BOEM, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the Army Corps of Engineers, Morin said.

Asked whether BOEM has the resources to manage all its work, Morin said “yes.”

“We actually brought on five new employees last year, and we plan to advertise for at least double that this year. We’re also pulling in resources from other federal agencies. The Bureau of Land Management has a lot of experience with onshore wind, [as does] our sister agency, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. And for all those third-party EIS contractors, we’re increasingly relying on those contracts.”

BOEM is currently holding issues-based workshops, such as a recent one to establish a regional science entity for offshore wind, and is also working with NMFS and the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) to organize a “state-of-the-science” workshop later this year, she said. It will additionally hold a second offshore wind and maritime industry knowledge exchange in northern New Jersey early this summer.

The agency is trying to streamline rulemaking, incorporating suggestions from stakeholders, and also learning from international partners, who “have a lot to teach us,” Morin said. “We have a very active international affairs office very entrenched within our offshore wind office and do have one-on-one contacts on whatever the high-priority topics are at the time. This year we expect to have these knowledge exchanges with Denmark, the Netherlands, Scotland, Germany and the European Commission’s directorate general for energy.”

Bay State Sets the Pace

Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) Commissioner Patrick Woodcock emphasized his state’s leadership in adopting technologies to fight climate change.

“Think about that in the context of offshore wind and what we have done over the last four years since the passage and Gov. [Charlie] Baker signing in 2016 the act to establish the procurements that have become the template across the Eastern seaboard,” Woodcock said. “It’s not just about emission reductions, but about creating that disruption that swells across the country.”

DOER in October awarded a contract to Mayflower Wind Energy, a joint venture between Shell and EDP Renewables, to develop 804 MW of offshore wind 20 nautical miles south of Nantucket Island.

Feb. 10 was the deadline for filing contracts with Mayflower, whose record-low price of $58.47/MWh “really continued to challenge all of our preconceived notions of what pricing means,” Woodcock said.

Bruce Carlisle, managing director of offshore wind at the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, added that the state’s 29-acre New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal is the only special-purpose port facility for offshore wind in the U.S. He noted his agency is also testing world’s largest turbine blade, General Electric’s 107-meter Haliade-X.

Developer Perspective

Nathaniel Mayo, manager of development and policy for Vineyard Wind, said that while “federal permitting is top of mind,” the company’s massive project has “moved almost completely through the state permitting process.”

The joint venture between Avangrid Renewables and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners last August bid for the second Massachusetts solicitation by offering several options on up to 800 MW of additional offshore wind.

Connecticut in December awarded the 804-MW Park City project to Vineyard Wind, Mayo noted.

Mayo also mentioned that New England offshore wind developers have jointly proposed spacing the turbines 1 nautical mile apart in a uniform grid layout.

Scott Lundin, head of permitting in New England for Equinor Wind US, said a U.S. Coast Guard draft study released last month on port access in Massachusetts and Rhode Island supports the developers’ proposal.

The study recommends that if “turbine layout is developed along a standard and uniform grid pattern, standard vessel routing measures would not be required,” and that such a grid layout would also help minimize the risk to search-and-rescue operations within a wind farm.

Stephanie Wilson, permit manager for Ørsted Energy, said her company is developing about 3,000 MW of offshore wind in partnership with Eversource Energy off New England and with Public Service Enterprise Group and Dominion in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Wilson emphasized Ørsted’s “investment in ports, with each of the contracts we’ve been awarded containing a significant commitment to invest in port infrastructure.”

Do Better

“I think we’re seeing momentum,” said Laura Smith Morton, senior director of policy and regulatory affairs at the American Wind Energy Association. “The [BOEM] decision to have the supplemental [analysis] was unexpected, and of course it was a hiccup … but then again, I don’t see that as being ultimately a problem because we are again moving forward.”

“We have a memorandum of understanding with NMFS and BOEM, which puts us in a unique position where we can work directly with both organizations while we’re representing the fishing industry,” said Fiona Hogan, research director for RODA.

Jack Clarke, Mass Audubon’s director of public policy and government relations, challenged Baker “to change the way we do offshore wind” to help the state meet his commitment to move to net zero emissions by 2050.

“New York has a goal of 9,000 MW, New Jersey has a goal of 7,500 MW and here we are in Massachusetts with a goal of 3,200 MW,” Clark said. “We can do better.”