Trio of US ports get $100m tax windfall boost as Massachusetts revs up offshore build
Extra investment announced by governor Charlie Baker designed to repurpose Salem, New Bedford, and Somerset harbours for wave of plant construction in coming decade
CGI of wind turbine installation vessels at Salem Harbor, MassachusettsFoto: Crowley Maritime
Tim Ferry
Three Massachusetts ports are in line for a slice of $100m newly earmarked for offshore wind infrastructure construction, following announced of an unexpected multi-billion-dollar tax windfall that will be used for to bolster state-level social and environmental initiatives.
The ports of Salem, New Bedford, and Somerset will receive the funding, announced yesterday, to position the Atlantic coastal cities as hubs for the industry, which has the US’ fist utility-scale project, the 800MW Vineyard Wind 1, under development off Martha's Vineyard.
Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker pitched a supplemental $1.7bn spending bill to the state legislature yesterday (Wednesday) at an event at Salem Harbor on the state’s north shore, set to be revamped into an wind port for the 1.2GW Commonwealth Wind farm being developed by Avangrid.
“The longer we wait to fund these projects, the longer we wait to break ground, the longer we wait to get going, the higher the costs of these projects will be and the farther back in line we'll be,” Baker said in Salem.
Vineyard Wind 1, due to enter offshore construction starting next March, is being marshalled out of New Bedford Marine Commerce Terminal (NBMT), the nation’s first purpose-built offshore wind staging port.
CGI of wind turbine installation vessels at Salem Harbor, MassachusettsFoto: Crowley Maritime
“Investment in port infrastructure is critically important to not just the success of the offshore wind industry but also to reaching our carbon pollution reduction targets and advancing the goals of vital port communities,” said Rachel Pachter, chief development officer at developer Vineyard Offshore.
Vineyard Offshore emerged from the separation of the Vineyard Wind partnership of Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) and partner Avangrid Renewables – the American group controlled by Spanish utility Iberdrola – following their success in bringing Vineyard Wind 1 into construction.
Massachusetts has 3.2GW of contracted offshore wind capacity, including the 1.2GW Mayflower Wind 1&2 projects owned by the consortium of Ocean Winds and Shell New Energies, putting it more than halfway towards its mandated target of 5.6GW by 2035.
Massachusetts has prioritised pricing in its offshore wind tenders, yet will still see major private investment by its sector developers, including $10bn pledged by Iberdrola, as well as transmission investments and manufacturing.
With multiple projects beginning offshore construction in 2023, the state will quickly experience what will soon be a national shortfall of port capacity.
The emerging US offshore wind sector faces a looming “port area shortfall” from 2023 as it sets about building a planned first wave of utility-scale projects off the country’s eastern seaboard, adding to a growing list of industrial headaches including grid pinchpoints and manufacturing and vessel constraints, a new study from the University of Delaware (UD) has concluded.
Meeting the Biden administration’s “national goal” of having 30GW of wind plant capacity in American waters by 2030 will call for at least 327 acres of marshalling space as early as 2024, against an expected availability of 114 acres, some 191 acres short, according to the research by Willet Kempton and Sara Parkison from UD, which was based on benchmark of 1GW of project installation requiring 54 acres of quayside laydown area over 18 months.
The lack of port capacity and scale will force developers to deploy multiple ports simultaneously in what risks being a complex and expensive offshore wind installation rollout.
