January 6, 2021 — Vineyard Wind has withdrawn its construction and operation plans from the federal permitting process, suddenly throwing the future into limbo for the international consortium that has been at the front of the pack in the race to build offshore wind farms off the American eastern seaboard.
The first announcement that Vineyard Wind would withdraw from federal review was buried in a public statement that went out Dec. 1 about the company’s selection of General Electric’s Haliade-X as its preferred wind turbine generator model.
In followup statements Monday, both Vineyard Wind and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the federal agency responsible for reviewing the project, confirmed the withdrawal.
Vineyard Wind is a joint wind energy venture between Copenhagen Infrastructure Projects and Avangrid Renewables. The $2.8 billion plan to build a 108-turbine, 800-megawatt wind farm in federal waters about 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard has been working its way through the dense federal permitting process for the past three years.
“That federal register notice is crystal clear,” said Annie Hawkins, director of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, which advocates for commercial fishing. “The review of your plan has been terminated. You can resubmit from day one.”
Ms. Hawkins said the decision from BOEM was just one of three major developments for fishing interests this week. A Senate bill was passed requiring companies to use American ships and labor for offshore wind construction, just as an internal BOEM memo to Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt argued that offshore wind development could not unreasonably interfere with fishing operations, rather than simply the “legal right to fish.”
A copy of the memo was provided to the Gazette.
“From the fishing industry perspective, this is like hitting the trifecta,” Ms. Hawkins said. “It seems to be that this is a game-changing week for offshore wind.