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A month in the past, officers in New York celebrated the completion of South Fork Wind, the primary utility-scale offshore wind farm to function within the state — and nationwide. The milestone marked what they hoped could be a contemporary begin after a yr of setbacks and disappointments for the trade, not simply in New York however throughout the Eastern Seaboard.
But the rising offshore wind sector hasn’t escaped the tumult simply but.
Late final week, New York declined to award remaining contracts to a few main initiatives, citing an “incapability to return to phrases” with builders after their wind-turbine provider, GE Vernova, modified its manufacturing plans. The proposed offshore wind farms represented 4,000 megawatts (4 gigawatts) of whole clean-energy capability and a giant portion of the state’s ambitions to put in 9 GW of offshore wind by 2035.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) mentioned it can look to open one other aggressive bidding spherical to fill the outlet created by the newest cancellation. The state efficiently salvaged two beforehand endangered initiatives earlier this yr by a fast-tracked public sale course of — the 924 MW Sunrise Wind venture and the 816 MW Empire Wind 1 venture — albeit at a lot greater energy costs.
“Amidst the evolving challenges confronted by the offshore wind trade, NYSERDA is constant to take proactive measures to reply to and tackle these points head-on,” the state authority mentioned in a information launch. “These subsequent steps will probably be introduced within the close to future.”
The growth is the newest trigger for whiplash in an trade that appears to be consistently making and reversing progress all at as soon as.
Offshore wind is taken into account essential to the nation’s efforts to interchange fossil-fuel energy vegetation and meet rising electrical energy demand from huge information facilities and electrified buildings and automobiles. That’s very true for densely populated areas and coastal cities with giant energy wants and little out there land for sprawling vitality initiatives.
New York’s offshore wind aspirations are among the many most bold within the nation — and key to complying with the state’s local weather regulation, which mandates a carbon-free grid by 2040. With the 132 MW South Fork Wind now on-line close to Long Island, the state is lower than 2 % of the best way towards assembly its goal.
Which means’s the wind blowing?
One of NYSERDA’s foremost roles in driving offshore wind growth is to obtain “credit” from initiatives representing each megawatt-hour of unpolluted electrical energy that will probably be delivered to the grid. Developers can’t finance their giant, multibillion-dollar wind farms with out first securing contracts from state businesses or utilities promising to purchase the ability as soon as the generators begin spinning.
To that finish, in October 2023, NYSERDA provisionally awarded contracts to the three new offshore wind farms: the 1.4 GW Attentive Energy One growth, the 1.3 GW Community Offshore Wind farm, and the 1.3 GW Excelsior Wind venture. In the identical announcement, NYSERDA provisionally awarded $300 million in state grant funding to GE Vernova and LM Wind Power to fabricate offshore wind turbine parts close to Albany, New York.
Around that point final yr, different offshore wind initiatives in later phases of growth — in New York and alongside the East Coast — have been dealing with cancellations or critical delays resulting from broader monetary and logistical hurdles. So when NYSERDA’s leaders mentioned the provisional awards, they struck a word of reassurance for the embattled trade.
“You can depend on us to not solely deal with the challenges dealing with the prevailing trade, but in addition to maintain the trade shifting ahead,” Doreen Harris, president and CEO of NYSERDA, mentioned in mid-November.
Ultimately, the three new initiatives confronted challenges of their personal.
