December 15, 2020 — The CEO of Vineyard Wind said the country’s first large offshore wind project will move forward, despite being told by the Interior Department last week that the company would need to refile a new application for a federal environmental permit.
Vineyard abruptly announced this month that it was temporarily withdrawing its application from the federal review process. The company said the move was needed to incorporate larger turbines into its plan (Climatewire, Dec. 2).
But sources close to the process said Interior’s decision to delay a final verdict on the project until five days before Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration contributed to the company’s withdrawal.
Federal officials told Vineyard Wind on Friday that it would need to file a new application to restart the process. The development was first reported by Bloomberg.
In an interview yesterday, Vineyard CEO Lars Pedersen said he did not think the company would need to start the permitting process from scratch once it resubmits a new application.
“This project has been going through an extremely rigorous review,” Pedersen said, pointing to an environmental impact study started in 2018 and a cumulative impact study initiated last year. “We feel that all of these studies and all of the reviews that have been done on the project are still there. And therefore, we feel like that a reintroduction of the project in front of the agency can be completed in a relatively short period of time.”
The move amounts to a massive bet on the incoming Biden administration’s willingness to advance the project. Federal regulators will have the ultimate say over how to treat the new application.
Biden has signaled support for offshore wind. A team of Obama administration veterans recommended that the president-elect approve offshore wind permits within his first 100 days as part of the administration’s wider climate agenda.
Offshore wind is also a top priority of states in the Northeast, which view the industry as a key source of new jobs and a central cog in their climate plans. Their concerns have held little sway in the Trump administration but are likely to resonate with the incoming president’s team, said one source close to the process.
Fishing groups expressed concern about the withdrawal. In a letter to BOEM and Interior earlier this month, the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) said Vineyard’s withdrawal “marks the latest confusing episode in [a] years-long parade of announcements of starts, stops, changes, cans, can’t, wills and won’ts.”
RODA said it was concerned that BOEM staff members were working too closely with developers while not offering the same level of input to fishing groups.
Annie Hawkins, the group’s executive director, said the fishing industry has little preference for whether the project’s fate is decided by President Trump or Biden. Mostly, she said, it wants to see improved transparency from federal agencies and to have its concerns addressed.